Search results

Recognizes that the employment service is an industry in which the employment agency is now more than just a service – it is now a business. Acknowledges that human resource management planning is key to match employee competency for an employer, as without employees nothing gets done. Looks at what employment agencies provide, e.g.: regular employment; contract services; temporary to hire; and payroll services. Concludes that employment agencies and human resource professionals should be in tandem to help the organisation to best use its process for change continuously.

This paper aims to investigate the electrochromic (EC) properties of poly(triphenylamine alkyl ether) and poly(triphenylamine aryl ether) in two different electrolyte solution to study the resistive switching behaviour of acid-doped poly(triphenylamine alkyl ether).

By Buchwald–Hartwig coupling reaction, two novel poly[N-p-phenoxy-N-[4-[2-(2-methoxyethoxy)ethoxy]ethoxy]triphenylamineandpoly[N,N-bis(4-phenoxy)]triphenylamine were synthesized from 4-phenoxyaniline and two dibromo aromatic compounds, 1,2-bis[β,β′-(p-bromophenoxy)ethoxy]ethane and bis(4-bromophenyl) ether.

Poly(triphenylamine alkyl ether) displayed excellent EC characteristics, with a coloration change from a colourless neutral state to light blue and red oxidized states, while poly(triphenylamine aryl ether) showed coloration a change from a colourless neutral state to light blue oxidized state in tetrabutylammonium perchlorate electrolyte solution. Moreover, p-toluenesulfonic acid-doped poly(triphenylamine alkyl ether) exhibited a non-volatile bistable resistive switching behaviour with a high high-conductivity/low-conductivity ratio of up to 104, long retention time exceeding 2.5 × 10³ s and the switching threshold voltage was also lower than −2V.

In this paper, the non-volatile bistable resistive switching behaviour of acid-dopedpoly(triphenylamine alkyl ether) was in accordance with the molar ratio of 1:1. The effects of different molar ratios remained to be studied.

Poly(triphenylamine ether)s may find optoelectronic applications as new EC and resistive switching materials.

The effects of alkyl and aryl ether structures in the main chain on the EC and resistive switching behaviour of triphenylamine unit have not yet been reported.

While earlier acquisition research often focused on either the acquirer or the target side of analysis, recent work has increasingly emphasized the need to understand the dyadic interrelationship between the target and the acquirer. This review aims at synthesizing research progress in the area of target–acquirer interrelationships and understanding what questions remain unanswered. The author organizes this review into three dimensions of target–acquirer interrelationship: (a) their relative attributes (what both parties are relative to each other), (b) their connections (what both parties have with each other), and (c) their interactions (what both parties do to each other). Based on the review, the author then identifies critical research gaps and opportunities for developing a more comprehensive understanding of the interrelationship between the target and the acquirer in acquisitions.

With the rapid development of paid online social question and answer (Q&A) communities, monetary social functions have been introduced and have potential benefits for both platforms and users. However, these functions' impact on knowledge contribution remains uncertain. This study proposes a conceptual model based on the stimulus–organism–response framework, according to which monetary and non-monetary social functions can help nurture short-term and long-term relationships among community users, and thereafter improves social identity and knowledge-sharing intentions.

This study selects Zhihu, a famous online social Q&A community in China, and conducts an online survey to collect data from its frequent users. A sample of 286 valid questionnaires was collected to test our research model by using a structural equation modeling method. In addition, a bootstrapping approach is used to test the mediation effect.

Results indicate that monetary social functions help nurture short-term and long-term relationships among community users. However, non-monetary social functions only affect short-term relationships directly. Short-term and long-term relationships both have a positive relationship with social identity and thereafter improve users' knowledge-sharing intentions.

This study focuses on users' knowledge-sharing intentions in Q&A communities from the perspective of social. Specifically, we separated social functions in Q&A platforms into monetary and non-monetary ones and explored their impact on the development of short-term and long-term relationships. Results demonstrate the importance of monetary social functions and explain how monetary and non-monetary social functions affect users' knowledge-sharing intentions in different approaches.

By distinguishing opportunism-based and bounded rationality-based transaction costs, the study examines how firms use equity/relational governance and boundary spanners' guanxi to govern their exploration alliances in a transaction cost economizing way.

This study used a survey methodology for data collection, and the sample consists of 150 exploration alliances formed by large Taiwanese information and electronic firms.

Findings of this study show that exploration alliances incur considerable transaction costs and require high-level equity control and relational governance. The positive exploration of alliance-equity ownership relationship will be weakened by boundary spanners' guanxi when guanxi serves to harmonize conflicts and mitigate opportunism-based transaction costs, thereby reducing the need for using costly equity ownership to govern exploration alliances. In contrast, the positive exploration alliance-relational governance relationship will be amplified when guanxi becomes a source of legitimacy in the Chinese guanxi institution. This relation-augmenting effect will drive more relational governance because guanxi and relational governance together allow alliance managers to obtain sufficient legitimacy in the formation of a common dominant frame, thereby mitigating bounded rationality-based transaction costs.

By distinguishing various moderating effects of boundary spanners' guanxi and separating transaction costs into two forms, this study contributes to the existing literature as well as advances our understanding of alliance governance decisions in the Chinese business environment.

With the continuous increase of space activities and insight into space exploration, the velocity of near space hypersonic vehicles becomes higher and higher, which leads to the aerothermodynamic phenomenon getting worse around a vehicle; therefore, the exploration of numerical scheme applicability is essential for hypersonic flow simulations.

The implicit finite volume schemes are derived from axisymmetric Navier–Stokes equations for chemical equilibrium flow and programmed in Fortran. Taking the atmosphere at 30 km as an example, the performance of spatial discretization schemes such as AUSMPW and AUSMPW+ are analyzed in a range of Mach numbers from 17 to 32.

The AUSMPW scheme appears pressure jump near the stagnation if the Mach number is over 18, but AUSMPW+ scheme shows better performance in comparison.

This study will help the aerothermodynamic design in near space hypersonic vehicles.

The development of social networks enhances the interaction between people, which brings new challenges to the research of group decision-making (GDM). This study aims at the problem that the synergy and redundancy due to interaction among decision-makers are ignored in the previous GDM, a trust-enhanced consensus reaching model based on interaction among decision-makers with incomplete preferences is proposed.

Firstly, confidence level is introduced to improve the hesitation phenomenon that should be considered when calculating trust degree; Secondly, a new trust propagation operator is developed to deal with indirect trust relationships; Thirdly, trust degree is transformed into interaction index to quantify the synergy and redundancy in decision-making. Fuzzy capacities of decision-makers are used to replace traditional weights, and the final scores of alternatives are obtained through Choquet integral.

The proposed model using fuzzy capacity can reflect the synergy or redundancy among decision-makers and improve the accuracy of final ranking result and reduce the loss of information.

This study proposes a trust-enhanced consensus reaching model, which develops a new trust propagation operator to ensure the continuous attenuation of trust in propagation process. And the proposed model uses fuzzy capacity to improve the enhancement or attenuation on the scores of alternatives.

High risk is one of the most prominent characteristics of the Chinese construction industry, and it poses a significant threat to construction projects. Owing to initiatives aimed at achieving high efficiency, low carbon emissions, etc., industrialization of the construction industry has become an inevitable trend in China. However, it remains to be discussed whether industrialization of construction can reduce the risks entailed in construction projects compared with traditional construction. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Based on the theory of risk life cycle, this paper proposes a practical risk assessment technique to assess the risk life cycle, including the risk occurrence time and potential financial losses. This technique is then applied to assess the differences between the risks involved in an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) project executed via traditional and industrial production modes.

The results show that the total duration of risks in the industrial construction project is half of that in the traditional project. In addition, the expected financial loss entailed in the industrial construction project is 29 percent lower than that in the traditional construction project. Therefore, industrial construction has the potential to optimize risk performance.

There is no significant difference between the traditional and industrial construction models in terms of probability of risk. The maximum total loss might occur in the procurement stage in the case of industrial production, and in the construction stage in the case of traditional production. Moreover, the total expected loss from risk in the EPC project in the industrial production mode is only half of that in the traditional production route. This study is expected to provide a new risk evaluation technique and promote an understanding of the life cycle of risk management in the construction industry.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.