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The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of self-serving leadership on employees’ organizational deviance and its internal mechanism.

Through the data collected from 300 supervisor–employee dyads of five large enterprises in China, this research uses multilevel structural equation model to test the proposal hypotheses.

Results show that there is a positive relationship between self-serving leadership and employees’ organizational deviance, and ego depletion plays a mediating role between them. Moreover, this research also found that the relationship between self-serving leadership and ego depletion and the indirect effect of self-serving leadership on employees’ organizational deviance through ego depletion are negatively moderated by power distance orientation.

This study found a new antecedent variable of employees’ organizational deviance-self-serving leadership, and based on the ego depletion theory, deeply reveals the internal mechanism of self-serving leadership influencing employees’ organizational deviance, which has some enlightening significance for relevant theoretical research and management practice. In addition, this study also has unique advantages in data collection and analysis methods.

Drawing upon ego depletion theory, the authors developed a serial mediation model linking job insecurity with employee political behavior in which resource depletion and moral disengagement operated as two sequential mediators. The authors further identified employee moral identity as an important boundary condition that impacts the strength of this serial mediation effect.

Multilevel analyses were utilized to test the proposed hypotheses by analyzing a sample included 306 employees nested in 71 groups.

Results revealed that job insecurity induced resource depletion that activated moral disengagement, which in turn instigated political behavior. Furthermore, employee moral identity weakened this serial indirect effect. Specifically, this indirect effect was positive when moral identity was low, whereas did not present when moral identity was high.

Prior studies have primarily concentrated on the detrimental effects of job insecurity. However, less study has investigated how individuals proactively cope with job insecurity. The authors contribute to this stream of research by exploring whether and how job insecurity facilitates employee political behavior.

This study employs situated learning theory to elucidate the mechanisms of interorganizational collaboration by analyzing the relationships among absorptive capacity, institutional compensation, task cognitive integration and interorganizational collaboration in BIM-enabled construction projects.

An online questionnaire survey was conducted with managers and professionals involved in building information modeling (BIM-) enabled construction projects, and 220 valid responses were received. Data were analyzed by means of the linear regression models and bootstrap method.

The results show that (1) absorptive capacity, institutional compensation and task cognitive integration have a positive impact on interorganizational collaboration; (2) institutional compensation partially mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration; (3) task cognitive integration fully mediates the effect of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration; (4) institutional compensation and task cognitive integration serially and fully mediate the relationship between absorptive capacity and interorganizational collaboration and (5) the serial mediating model has a greater indirect effect than the other two models considered in this study.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by demonstrating the way to break through the three types of organizational boundaries (i.e. syntactic, semantic and pragmatic organizational boundaries) and provide an internal collaborative mechanism from the perspective of situated learning theory. This study presents the critical effects of absorptive capacity, institutional compensation and task cognitive integration on interorganizational collaboration, selects the enhanced mediating model for explaining the effects of absorptive capacity on interorganizational collaboration and enables managers to update the traditional collaborative model in BIM-enabled construction projects.

The purpose of this paper is to adopt both the fragments of imidazole and thiosemicarbazide as reaction centers, to synthesize a water-soluble corrosion inhibitor named as thiosemicarbazide-imidazole derivative (TH-IM).

This paper presents potentiodynamic polarization tests, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy tests and morphology study of metal surface by scanning electron microscope and thermodynamic study.

In the aggressive condition of CO₂ saturated Wt. NaCl solution at 333 K for 72 h with 400 ppm inhibitor dosage, the efficiency of inhibition increases approximately 98 per cent through the method of weight loss.

This paper finds a new corrosion inhibitor about TH-IM which has a good solubility in water.

This paper aims to study the effects of MnO₂ on the ZnO–Bi₂O₃-based varistor prepared via flash sintering (FS)

MnO₂-doped ZnO–Bi₂O₃-based varistors were successfully prepared by the FS with a step-wise increase of the .current in 60 s at the furnace temperature <750°C under the direct current electric field of 300 V cm⁻¹. The FS process, microstructure and the electrical performance of ZnO–Bi₂O₃-based varistors were systematically investigated.

The doping of MnO₂ significantly decreased the onset temperature of FS and improved the electrical performance of FS ZnO varistor ceramic. The sample with 0.5 mol% MnO₂ doping shows the highest improvement, with the nonlinear coefficient of 18, the leakage current of 16.82 µA, the threshold voltage of 459 V/mm and the dielectric constant of 1,221 at 1 kHz.

FS is a wonderful technology to enhance ZnO varistors for its low energy consumption, and a short sintering time can reduce grain growth and inhabit Bi₂O₃ volatilize, yet few research studies work on that. In this research, the authors analyzed the FS process and improved the electrical characteristics through MnO₂ doping.

The purpose of this paper is to study the dynamic behavior of complex-valued switched grey neural network models (SGNMs) with distributed delays when the system parameters and external input are grey numbers.

Firstly, by using the properties of grey matrix, M-matrix theory and Homeomorphic mapping, the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium point of the SGNMs were discussed. Secondly, by constructing a proper Lyapunov functional and using the average dwell time approach and inequality technique, the robust exponential stability of the SGNMs under restricted switching was studied. Finally, a numerical example is given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed results.

Sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium point of the SGNMs have been established; sufficient conditions for guaranteeing the robust stability of the SGNMs under restricted switching have been obtained.

(1) Different from asymptotic stability, the exponential stability of SGNMs which include grey parameters and distributed time delays will be investigated in this paper, and the exponential convergence rate of the SGNMs can also be obtained; (2) the activation functions, self-feedback coefficients and interconnected matrices are with different forms in different subnetworks; and (3) the results obtained by LMIs approach are complicated, while the proposed sufficient conditions are straightforward, which are conducive to practical applications.

In recent years, the updating speed of products has been significantly accelerated, which not only provides diversified styles for consumers to select from but also makes consumers face selection problems sometimes. In addition, a large number of online reviews for products emerge on many e-commerce websites and influence consumers’ purchasing decisions. The purpose of this study is to propose a method for product selection considering consumer’s expectations and online reviews to support consumers’ purchasing decisions.

The product attributes are divided into two categories, i.e. demand attributes and word-of-mouth (WOM) attributes. For the demand attributes, for which the consumers can give specific quantified expectations, the value function of prospect theory is used to determine the consumer’s perceived values to the alternative products according to consumers’ expectations for these attributes and products’ specifications. For the WOM attributes, for which the consumers cannot give specific quantified expectations, the sentiment analysis method is used to identify the sentiment strengths for these attributes in the online reviews, and then the consumer’s perceived values to the alternative products are determined. On this basis, the product selection methods for single consumers and group consumers are given respectively.

Finally, taking the data of JD.com (https://www.jd.com/) as an example, the practicability and rationality of the method proposed in this paper is validated.

First, a new product selection problem considering consumer’s expectations and online reviews is extracted. Second, the product attributes are considered more comprehensively and are classified into two main categories. Third, the bounded rationality of the consumers in the decision-making process is described more reasonably. Fourth, the sentiment dictionaries for each WOM attribute are constructed and the algorithm step of identifying the sentiment strengths is designed, which can help to identify the sentiment strengths in the online reviews more accurately. Fifth, the situation that a group plans to purchase the same products and the members have inconsistent expectations for the product attributes is considered.

The importance of international dry port integration in the supply chain has received a great deal of attention and been widely discussed in the literature. This study empirically examines the relationship among dry port logistics supply chain integration (DPLSCI), its operational performance (OP) and dry port competitiveness (DPC) in the context of China.

The authors developed a structured questionnaire based on the supply chain integration (SCI) theory and resource-based view, and collected data from the dry port operation enterprises and their stakeholders in central and western China. A structural equation model (SEM) is used to test the research hypotheses.

The results demonstrate that DPLSCI has a positive effect on logistics cost performance (LCP) and service quality performance (SQP), which further improves DPC. Meanwhile, OP (LCP and SQP) is a full mediator between DPLSCI and DPC.

This paper provides guidelines for dry port operators and their stakeholders to integrate supply chain resources and develop the OP for improving the overall competitiveness of an international dry port. The government could also invest in physical infrastructure and system platform to strengthen the OP of a dry port and further enhance its competitiveness.

The authors emphasise that the international dry port is a proactive and integrated system in providing a supply chain logistics service. This study fills up a research gap in the extant literature on theoretically proposing and empirically testing a new theoretical model. It also contributes to dry port stakeholders by providing useful guidelines to enhance OP and dry port competitiveness.

In this study, a highly sensitive and quantitative analysis method using surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS)-labeled immunoassay is adopted for bisphenol A bisphenol A (BPA) detection in water samples.

Primarily, an excellent SERS immuno-nanoprobe is prepared, which relays on Au/Ag core-shell nanoparticles tagged 4-mercaptobenzoic acid (4MBA) and labeled with specific antibody against BPA. Second, the coating antigen of 4,4-Bis(4-hydroxyphenol) valeric acid (BVA) coupling poly-L-lysine (PLL) conjugate (BVA-PLL) is fastened on the substrate. Based on competitive immunoassay, the antibody labeled on SERS immuno-nanoprobe will bind with the free BPA and BVA-PLL competitively.

A calibration curve was obtained by plotting the intensity of SERS signal of 4MBA at 1007 cm⁻¹ versus the concentration of BPA. The results indicated that the limit of detection (LOD) for BPA is 1 ng/mL and present a great capacity for higher sensitivity. Furthermore, the method was able to quantitatively detect BPA in water samples, which was validated by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).

The method was developed based on competitive immunoassay, and the conjugate (BVA-PLL) was chosen as the coating antigen. Au/Ag core-shell nanoparticles played as the SERS active substrate and were labeled with Raman reporter. The value of this paper is supplying a wide potential for analysis of target analytes in the environmental monitoring and food safety.

The openings on aircraft structures can be modeled from an aerodynamical point of view as lid-driven cavities (LDC). This paper aims to show the primary verification and validation (V&V) process in computational fluid dynamics (CFD, and to investigate the influences of numerical settings on the efficiency and accuracy for solving the LDC problem.

To dig into the details of CFD approaches, this paper outlines the design, implementation, V&V and results of an efficient explicit algorithm. The parametric study is performed thoroughly focusing on various iteration methods, grid density discretization terms and Reynolds number effects.

This study parameterized the numerical implementation which provides empirical insights into how computational accuracy and efficiency are affected by changing numerical settings. At a low Reynolds number (not over 1,000), the time-derivative preconditioning is necessary, and k = 0.1 can be the optimal value to guarantee the efficiency, as well as the stability. A larger artificial viscosity (c = 1/16) would relieve the calculating oscillation issue but proportionally increase the discretization error. Furthermore, the iteration method and the mesh quality are two key factors that affect the convergence efficiency, thus need to be selected “wisely”.

The study shows how numerical implementation can enhance an accurate and efficient solution. This workflow can be used to determine the best parameter settings whenever CFD researchers applying this LDC problem as a complementary design tool for testing newly developed solvers.

The studied LDC problem is representative of CFD analysis in real aircraft structures. These numerical simulations provide a cost-effective and convenient tool to understand the parameter sensitivity, solution receptivity and physics of the CFD process.