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The purpose of this study is to identify the causative factors of metro construction safety accidents, analyze the correlation between accidents and causative factors and assist in developing safety management strategies for improving safety performance in the context of the Chinese construction industry.

To achieve these objectives, 13 types and 48 causations were determined based on 274 construction safety accidents in China. Then, 204 cause-and-effect relationships among accidents and causations were identified based on data mining. Next, network theory was employed to develop and analyze the metro construction accident causation network (MCACN).

The topological characteristics of MCACN were obtained, it is both a small-world network and a scale-free network. Controlling critical causative factors can effectively control the occurrence of metro construction accidents. Degree centrality strategy is better than closeness centrality strategy and betweenness centrality strategy.

In practice, it is very difficult to quantitatively identify and determine the importance of different accidents and causative factors. The weights of nodes and edges are failed to be assigned when constructing MCACN.

This study provides a theoretical basis and feasible management reference for construction enterprises in China to control construction risks and reduce safety accidents. More safety resources should be allocated to control critical risks. It is recommended that safety managers implement degree centrality strategy when making safety-related decisions.

This paper establishes the MCACN model based on data mining and network theory, identifies the properties and clarifies the mechanism of metro construction accidents and causations.

This paper aims to examine how banks’ accounting disclosure policies affect information content in stock prices and stock crash risk.

This paper uses 1996-2013 as the sample period. The final sample includes 10,045 observations in 37 countries. This paper uses stock return synchronicity to measure information content in stock prices. This study uses the frequency difference between extremely negative and positive stock returns to measure stock crash risk. To measure the level of bank accounting disclosure, this research follows Nier and Baumann (2006) to construct an aggregate disclosure index based on inclusions and omissions of a series of items in a bank’s annual accounting reports.

This paper finds that banks’ stocks have lower stock return synchronicity and fewer extremely negative returns if banks have higher levels of financial statement disclosure. These results suggest that banks’ stocks have higher information content and lower crash risk if banks’ information environment is more transparent.

Overall, this paper provides new insight about how to increase banks’ transparency and the safety of the banking industry, which is beneficial to economic growth. To increase banks’ transparency and reduce the possibility of extremely negative stock returns, one way to regulate banks is to increase their accounting disclosure. In addition, the extant literature (Chen et al., 2006, Durnev et al., 2003, 2004; Wurgler, 2000) demonstrates that firms with lower stock return synchronicity have more transparent information environments and higher investment efficiency. Thus, this paper finds that higher levels of bank accounting disclosure are associated with lower stock return synchronicity, which further reduces banks’ opacity and increases banks’ investment efficiency. Finally, compared to business firms, stock crash risk has much direr consequences because one bank’s stock crash will affect overall financial stability. Thus, it is important for authorities to know the effects of accounting disclosure on bank stock crash risk.

Security is the most important issue in Internet of Things (IoT)-based smart cities and blockchain (BC). So, the present paper aims to detect and organize the literature regarding security in the IoT-based smart cities and BC context. It also proposes an agenda for future research. Therefore, the authors did a statistical review of security in IoT and BC in smart cities. The present investigation aims to determine the principal challenges and disturbances in IoT because of the BC adoption, the central BC applications in IoT-based smart cities and the BC future in IoT-based smart cities.

IoT) has a notable influence on modernizing and transforming the society and industry for knowledge digitizing. Therefore, it may be perceived and operated in real time. The IoT is undergoing exponential development in industry and investigation. Still, it contains some security and privacy susceptibilities. Naturally, the research community pays attention to the security and privacy of the IoT. Also, the academic community has put a significant focus on BC as a new security project. In the present paper, the significant mechanisms and investigations in BC ground have been checked out systematically because of the significance of security in the IoT and BC in smart cities. Electronic databases were used to search for keywords. Totally, based on different filters, 131 papers have been gained, and 17 related articles have been obtained and analyzed. The security mechanisms of BC in IoT-based smart cities have been ranked into three main categories as follows, smart health care, smart home and smart agriculture.

The findings showed that BC’s distinctive technical aspects might impressively find a solution for privacy and security problems encountering the IoT-based smart cities development. They also supply distributed storage, transparency, trust and other IoT support to form a valid, impressive and secure distributed IoT network and provide a beneficial guarantee for IoT-based smart city users’ security and privacy.

The present investigation aims to be comprehensive, but some restrictions were also observed. Owing to the use of some filters for selecting the original papers, some complete works may be excluded. Besides, inspecting the total investigations on the security topic in BC and the IoT-based smart cities is infeasible. Albeit, the authors attempt to introduce a complete inspection of the security challenges in BC and the IoT-based smart cities. BC includes significant progress and innovation in the IoT-based smart cities’ security domain as new technology. Still, it contains some deficiencies as well. Investigators actively encounter the challenges and bring up persistent innovation and inspection of related technologies in the vision of the issues available in diverse application scenarios.

The use of BC technology in finding a solution for the security issues of the IoT-based smart cities is a research hotspot. There is numerable literature with data and theoretical support despite the suggestion of numerous relevant opinions. Therefore, this paper offers insights into how findings may guide practitioners and researchers in developing appropriate security systems dependent upon the features of IoT-based smart city systems and BC. This paper may also stimulate further investigation on the challenge of security in BC and IoT-based smart cities. The outcomes will be of great value for scholars and may supply sights into future investigation grounds in the present field.

As the authors state according to their knowledge, it is the first work using security challenges on BC and IoT-based smart cities. The literature review shows that few papers discuss how solving security issues in the IoT-based smart cities can benefit from the BC. The investigation suggests a literature review on the topic, recommending some thoughts on using security tools in the IoT-based smart cities. The present investigation helps organizations plan to integrate IoT and BC to detect the areas to focus. It also assists in better resource planning for the successful execution of smart technologies in their supply chains.

The purpose of this paper is to test the effects of antitakeover protection on investment-cash flow sensitivity and whether these effects are moderated by firms’ accounting information environment and agency problems.

To test the effects of agency problems, the authors use the passage of second-generation antitakeover laws as the testing ground, which is a pseudo-natural experiment that is widely used in the accounting, finance and economics literature (e.g. Armstrong et al., 2012; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2003).

The authors’ analysis shows that investment-cash flow sensitivity is greater when managers are insulated from takeovers. The authors’ results also demonstrate that the effects of the passage of antitakeover laws on investment-cash flow sensitivity are greater when firms’ accounting information environment is poor, which is measured by fewer analysts following and higher analyst forecast dispersion. The authors also show that the effects of the passage of antitakeover laws on investment-cash flow sensitivity are greater when firms have severe agency problems, which are measured by more free cash flow.

The authors’ research extends the empirical accounting literature about the effects of corporate governance and accounting information environment on firms’ operating and financial decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of SIN firms. SIN firms are firms from controversial sectors such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling and firearms.

This paper explains contrasts CSR practices of SIN firms with similar size and industry non-SIN counterparts.

This paper shows that SIN firms conduct more CSR practices than non-SIN firms. This paper also finds that CSR practices of SIN firms are value relevant only when these firms are performing below their peers.

The motivation for SIN firms to engage in higher CSR is the competitive advantage hypothesis and not moral rebalancing.

Based on the stakeholder theory, this study aims to investigate Chinese entrepreneurial firms’ selective satisfaction of Stakeholder demands on corporate social performance (CSP).

This study uses the survey data from privately owned companies in China, which is collected by the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce in three years of 2006, 2008 and 2010.

This paper suggests a contingency model of CSP: entrepreneurial firms selectively perform corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues rather than all CSP dimensions. Furthermore, this study illustrates that international operations, such as overseas exports, would strengthen the above positive relationships between foreign ownership and selected CSR issues.

This study contributes to the understanding of CSR activities in Chinese entrepreneurial firms, which are more selective when performing social issues. In addition to the theoretical contribution, this work suggests a contingency model to the stakeholder theory, indicating the moderating factors to the entrepreneurial firms’ motivation to perform specific social responsibilities.

This study aims to examine the effects of firms’ accounting disclosure policies on stock price synchronicity and stock crash risk, using a sample including 13 emerging markets. Furthermore, this research investigates how these relationships are affected by country-level investor protection and firm-level governance rankings.

This paper uses accounting disclosure measures constructed based on survey questions by Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (2001, CLSA). The accounting disclosure measure is used to explain the two dependent variables, stock price synchronicity and stock crash risk. The stock price synchronicity measure is defined as the logistic transformation of R2 following Hutton et al. (2009) and Jin and Myers (2006). R2 is taken from the estimation of an extended market model. The stock crash risk variable is measured as the frequency difference between extremely negative and positive stock return residues following Jin and Myers (2006). These stock return residues are taken from the estimation of an extended market model. Because the CLSA firm-level disclosure data are from 2000, this paper matches other data taken from the same year, for consistency. The final sample includes 204 observations in 13 emerging countries.

This paper finds that firms’ stocks are less synchronized with the entire market and have less crash risk if firms have superior accounting disclosure policies. These results suggest that the cost to collect firm-specific information may be decreased for investors if firms are more transparent. Thus, these firms’ stocks have more firm-specific information content. These results also suggest that management is less likely to hide some negative information and release such negative information suddenly in the future if firms have higher levels of accounting disclosure. Thus, these firms’ stocks are less likely to crash. In addition, the influences of firms’ accounting disclosure policies on stock price synchronicity and crash risk are more significant for firms with superior country-level investor protection and firm-level governance rankings. These results imply that external investors place more value on accounting disclosure by well-governed firms because firms with superior governance standards are less likely to intentionally disclose misleading information. Thus, these firms’ stocks can incorporate more firm-specific information and have less crash risk.

The current study is the first to show that the effects of accounting disclosure on stock price synchronicity and crash risk are more pronounced for firms with superior country-level investor protection and firm-level governance standards. Thus, this research extends the literature by providing a comprehensive picture of the influences of accounting disclosure on stock markets. In addition, the existing literature (Chen et al., 2006; Durnev et al., 2004) shows that firms with lower stock price synchronicity are associated with higher investment efficiency because managers invest based on the information in stock prices. Obviously, higher stock crash risk is highly related to higher bankruptcy risk for firms. Thus, examining the effects of accounting disclosure on stock price synchronicity and stock crash risk is of obvious importance to policy makers.

Proposes a possibilistic group support system (PGSS) for the retailer pricing and inventory problem when possibilistic fluctuations of product parameters are controlled by a set of possibilistic optimality conditions. Experts in various functional areas convey their subjective judgement to the PGSS in the form of analytical models (for product parameters estimation), fuzzy concepts (facts), and possibilistic propositions (for validation and choice procedures). Basic probability assignments are used to elicit experts’ opinions. They are then transformed into compatibility functions for fuzzy concepts using the falling shadow technique. Evidence is processed in the form of fuzzy concepts, then is rewritten back to basic probability assignments using the principle of least ignorance on randomness. The PGSS allows the user (inventory control) to examine a trade‐off between the belief value of a greater profit and a lower amount of randomness associated with it.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of minor addition of the rare earth (RE) element cerium, Ce, on the microstructures and creep properties of Sn-Ag-Cu solder alloys.

The pure Sn, Sn-Cu alloy, Sn-Ag alloy and Cu-Ce alloy were used as raw materials. Sn-Ag-Cu alloys with different contents of RE Ce were chosen to compare with Sn-Ag-Cu. The raw materials of Sn, Sn-Cu alloy, Sn-Ag alloy, Cu-Ce alloy were melted in a ceramic crucible, and were melted at 550°C ± 1°C for 40 minutes. To homogenize the solder alloy, mechanical stirring was performed every ten minutes using a glass rod. During the melting, KC1 + LiCI (1.3:1), were used over the surface of liquid solder to prevent oxidation. The melted solder was chill cast into a rod.

It is found that the microstructure exhibits smaller grains and the Ag₃Sn/Cu₆Sn₅ intermetallic compound (IMC) phases are modified in matrix with the addition of Ce. In particular, the addition of 0.03 wt.% Ce to the Sn-Ag-Cu solder can refine the microstructures and decrease the thickness of the IMC layers of Sn-Ag-Cu solder alloys. Meanwhile, thermodynamic analysis showed that these phenomena could be attributed to the reduction of the driving force for Cu-Sn IMC formation due to the addition of Ce. Results calculated using the thermodynamic method are close to the above experimental data. Thus, the optimum content of Ce in Sn-Ag-Cu solder alloys should be about 0.030 percent. Additionally, the effect of Ce on the creep rupture life of Sn-Ag-Cu soldered joints was studied. It was found that the creep rupture life may be increased up to 7.5 times more than that of the original Sn-Ag-Cu alloy, when Ce accounts for 0.030 percent.

This paper usefully investigates the effects of the RE cerium (Ce), on the microstructures and creep properties of Sn-Ag-Cu solder alloys, optimizing the quantity of Ce in the Sn-Ag-Cu solder alloy through a thermodynamic method and by creep-rupture life testing.

The purpose of this paper is to know what scientific literature presents about the theme evaluation of seaport performance, thus enabling the construction of knowledge in the researchers and the identification of gaps in the research that will lead to advances in the area from the identification of the characteristics of a portfolio of relevant international publications.

From the basic philosophical (constructivism), of the kind strategy (research-action) and the method used for the accomplishment of such strategy (structured process knowledge development process – constructivist (ProKnow-C)) the current research has a qualitative approach.

From the analysis of the bibliographic portfolio composed of 23 articles, the main results were: focus of the evaluation of seaport performance is on operational and tactical efficiency rather than on strategic and global performance; the majority of the studies does not relate to the reality experienced by seaport managers due to the limited interaction with these managers, evidencing a distance of the researchers from the object of their research; and performance evaluation was barely used/explored as a tool to support management, only for the sake of evaluation itself.

The search occurred in the databases Web of Science, Scopus, Proquest, Ebsco, Sciece Direct and Wiley.

The identification of gaps that might promote advances in this field of knowledge, once the seaport segment is not exploring the potential that performance evaluation can offer and is already available in literature.