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Massive increases in international trade and investment extend industries beyond national borders, so states and enterprises have become the two critical players in the boundary of industries. The purpose of this paper is to provide a new conceptual framework to analyze the role of states and enterprises in enhancing the industrial international competitiveness (IIC).

Being a research‐based paper, the topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development. The paper reviews IIC literature and argues for a rational study ICC in the context of global value chain. Next, the paper puts forward a two‐dimensional governance model and five typical governance systems of the industries of developing countries. Examples of typical governance system are given based the practice of Chinese industries, such as appeal, rare earths, automotive, etc.

This paper constructs an industrial two‐dimensional governance model of the developing countries in the context of global value chain based on the interaction between industry governance and market governance, and also presents five typical governance systems – free to market, public governance, industrial governance, joint governance and network governance. Different governance system reflects different roles of states and enterprises played in the global value chains and result in different IIC in the end.

The limitation is based primarily on methodology. The two‐dimensional governance model provides target‐oriented guidance for foresting international competitiveness of different types of industries. Future studies should include more in‐depth case studies on different governance system.

The paper presents a framework of the industrial two‐dimensional governance model, which emphasizes the important role of both states and enterprise in the IIC in the context of global value chain.

This paper aims to help scholars to know the frontiers in the strategic management field. On studying, it was noted that business strategic management originated from America in the 1960s and has experienced more than half a century. However, strategic management development lacks systematical summary in the twenty-first century. The scientometric method was appliedto find out the frontiers and progress of the research of strategic management in the twenty-first century, based on the literature from 2001 to 2012 in the Strategic Management Journal.

In the paper, the authors mainly used the scientometric method and applied keywords, co-occurrence method combined with multistatistical methods and mutation words analysis, author co-citation, literature co-citation and keywords co-occurrence (national).

The findings show that the strategic management research focuses on the following theories and academic thoughts: knowledge-based view, network organization research and dynamic capability are the mainstream; besides, strategy risk, the stakeholders analysis of strategy management, corporate reputation and strategic concept also attract the attention of researchers; Barney, Teece and Porter have made significant contributions to strategy management research since the twenty-first century.

The findings in the paper will help scholars in the field of strategic management to know the main frontiers of the theory, as well as the main contributors.

Drawing on signaling theory and the “signal transmission–interpretation–feedback” framework, this study explores the effects of perceived distributive justice and respect from managers on nurses' work meaningfulness and work effort in public hospitals in China and examines the moderating role of work self-efficacy.

We collected 341 paired questionnaires for nurses and managers from four public hospitals in China. The data were analyzed by structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis.

Distributive justice and managers' respect for employees are positively related to work meaningfulness. Additionally, work self-efficacy negatively moderates this relationship. Work meaningfulness is positively related to work effort and fully mediates the relationships between perceived distributive justice and respect from the manager and work effort.

This study provides useful insights for healthcare organizations to improve nurses' work meaningfulness from the perspectives of their material and emotional needs, according to their work self-efficacy characteristics, thus promoting their work effort. The findings offer important guidance for improving the effectiveness of grass-roots human resources to cope with unpredictable situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study focuses on the organization's environmental factors that affect the primary staff's work meaningfulness. Further, it analyzes the differences in signal interpretation among nurses with different work self-efficacy characteristics, thus providing new insights into work meaningfulness. Through manager–nurse pairing data, it reveals the important role of work meaningfulness in motivating work effort.

Conventional machining methods for fabricating piezoelectric components such as ultrasound transducer arrays are time-consuming and limited to relatively simple geometries. The purpose of this paper is to develop an additive manufacturing process based on the projection-based stereolithography process for the fabrication of functional piezoelectric devices including ultrasound transducers.

To overcome the challenges in fabricating viscous and low-photosensitive piezocomposite slurry, the authors developed a projection-based stereolithography process by integrating slurry tape-casting and a sliding motion design. Both green-part fabrication and post-processing processes were studied. A prototype system based on the new manufacturing process was developed for the fabrication of green-parts with complex shapes and small features. The challenges in the sintering process to achieve desired functionality were also discussed.

The presented additive manufacturing process can achieve relatively dense piezoelectric components (approximately 95 per cent). The related property testing results, including X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope, dielectric and ferroelectric properties as well as pulse-echo testing, show that the fabricated piezo-components have good potentials to be used in ultrasound transducers and other sensors/actuators.

A novel bottom-up projection system integrated with tape casting is presented to address the challenges in the piezo-composite fabrication, including small curing depth and viscous ceramic slurry recoating. Compared with other additive manufacturing processes, this method can achieve a thin recoating layer (as small as 10 μm) of piezo-composite slurry and can fabricate green parts using slurries with significantly higher solid loadings. After post processing, the fabricated piezoelectric components become dense and functional.

The purpose of this work is to controllably synthesize a carbon aerogel with programmable functionally graded performance via a simple and effective strategy.

This work uses polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) via the controllable sol-gel, lyophilization, and carbonization approach to achieve a programmable carbon aerogel. This design has the advantages of low raw material and preparation cost, simple and controllable synthetic process and low carbonization temperature.

The thermal stability and microstructure of PVA aerogel can be controlled by the crosslinking agent content within a certain range. The crosslinking agent content and the carbonization temperature are the key factors for functionally graded programming of carbon aerogels, including microstructure, oxygen-containing functional groups and adsorption performance. The adsorption ratio and adsorption rate of uranium can be controlled by adjusting initial concentration and pH value of the uranium solution. The 2.5%25 carbon aerogel with carbonization temperature of 350 °C has excellent adsorption performance when the initial concentration of uranium solution is 32 ppm at pH 7.5.

As a new type of lightweight nano-porous amorphous carbon material, this carbon aerogel has many excellent properties.

This work presents a simple, low cost and controllable strategy for functionally graded programming of novel carbon aerogel. This carbon aerogel has great potential for application in various fields such as uranium recovery, wastewater treatment, sound absorption and shock absorption.

The purpose of this article is to examine the reasons for the creation of co‐links between pairs of business web sites. Specifically, to determine whether co‐linked business web sites are really related.

Co‐links to 32 telecommunications companies were retrieved using Yahoo! and a random sample of 495 co‐linking pages (the page that initiated the co‐link) were selected for a content analysis. The context of the co‐link and the content of the co‐linking page were manually examined to record the following data: type of web site and the reason for the creation of the co‐link.

The study found that 61.4 per cent of co‐links were created to connected pairs of highly related businesses (related companies, related products, and related services). Only 14.7 per cent of co‐links were created for non‐business reasons. The remaining 23.8 per cent of co‐linked sites showed a loose or marginal business relationship. The study also found that co‐links targeting home pages (as opposed to non‐homepages) were more likely to connect related businesses. Furthermore, co‐links coming from commercial sites (as opposed to other sites such as educational sites) are more likely to link related businesses.

The findings from this content analysis study confirm results from previous quantitative studies that showed that web co‐links measure relatedness of co‐linked sites and that co‐links can be objects of web data mining. The study contributes to our understanding of link motivations and the web linking phenomenon in general. The difference between links to homepages and that to non‐homepages found in the study can guide us in co‐link data collection.

The paper seeks to extend co‐link analysis to web sites of heterogeneous companies belonging to different industries and countries, and to cluster companies by industries and compare results from different countries.

Web sites of 255 companies that belong to five stock exchange indexes were included in the study. Data on co‐links pointing to these web sites were gathered using Yahoo!. Co‐link data were analyzed using multidimensional scaling (MDS) to generate MDS maps that would position companies based on their co‐link counts.

Comparisons of results across different countries and economies showed the following overall pattern: companies whose businesses are information‐based tend to form well‐defined clusters, while companies operating on a more traditional business model tend not to form clear groups. A comparison between the EU zone and the USA suggests that the EU economy is not well integrated yet.

The findings from the study suggest the possibility of using co‐link analysis to distinguish information‐based industries from traditional industries.

The paper extends co‐link analysis from a single industry to heterogeneous industries with global and complex business phenomena.

Contracts and trust are two prominent governance mechanisms in buyer–supplier exchanges, yet controversy persists regarding the interplay between contracts and trust. This study aims to provide a new perspective to understand the debate by differentiating between- from within-dyad effects of contracts–trust relationships.

Based on survey data of 250 Chinese buyer–supplier relationships collected over two time periods, this study used two-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) with repeated measures to test the influence of contracts (trust) on trust (contracts) over time.

The authors find that for major buyer–supplier exchanges, contracts and trust tend to complement each other when comparing across dyads, but they likely substitute for each other in within-dyad settings.

First, to illustrate the dynamic interactions between contracts and trust, this study collected data at two time periods and assumed continuous linear relationships of time with both contracts and trust. Further research should collect multiple waves of data to explore the complex, varying changes that arise over time. Second, this study’s findings are based on buyer–supplier relationships in China, whose unique cultural features may limit the generalizability of the results to other settings.

Channel managers can structure exchanges by devising detailed contracts that align incentives and demonstrate commitment, which helps build trust in a relationship. Channel managers should also pay special attention to the contingency effects of their transactional and relational features.

This study offers the first explicit test of the dynamic contracts–trust relationship, thereby establishing a more refined understanding of interplay between contracts and trust.

This paper aims to present a new trajectory optimization approach targeting spray painting applications that satisfies the paint thickness requirements of complex-free surfaces.

In this paper, a new trajectory generation approach is developed to optimize the transitional segments at the junction of adjacent patches for straight line, convex arc and concave arc combinations based on different angles between normal vectors of patches. In addition, the paint parameters including the paint gun velocity, spray height and the distance between adjacent trajectories have been determined in the generation approach. Then a thickness distribution model is established to simulate the effectiveness of trajectory planning.

The developed approach was applied to a complex-free surface of various curvatures, and the analysis results of the trajectory optimization show that adopting different transitional segment according to the angle between normal vectors can obtain the optimal trajectory. Based on the simulation and experimental validation results, the proposed approach is effective at improving paint thickness uniformity, and the obtained results are consistent with the simulation results, meaning that the simulation model can be used to predict the actual paint performance.

This paper discusses a new trajectory generation approach to decrease the thickness error values to satisfy spray paint requirements. According to the successfully performed simulation and experimental results, the approach is useful and practical in overcoming the challenge of improving the paint thickness quality on complex-free surface.

In the rapidly evolving digital economy, businesses face formidable pressures to maintain their competitive standing, prompting a surge of interest in the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital transformation (DT). This study aims to assess the impact of AI technologies on corporate DT by scrutinizing 3,602 firm-year observations listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. The research delves into the extent to which investments in AI drive DT, while also investigating how this relationship varies based on firms' ownership structure.

To explore the influence of AI technologies on corporate DT, the research employs robust quantitative methodologies. Notably, the study employs multiple validation techniques, including two-stage least squares (2SLS), propensity score matching and an instrumental variable approach, to ensure the credibility of its primary findings.

The investigation provides clear evidence that AI technologies can accelerate the pace of corporate DT. Firms strategically investing in AI technologies experience faster DT enabled by the automation of operational processes and enhanced data-driven decision-making abilities conferred by AI. Our findings confirm that AI integration has a significant positive impact in propelling DT across the firms studied. Interestingly, the study uncovers a significant divergence in the impact of AI on DT, contingent upon firms' ownership structure. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) exhibit a lesser degree of DT following AI integration compared to privately owned non-SOEs.

This study contributes to the burgeoning literature at the nexus of AI and DT by offering empirical evidence of the nexus between AI technologies and corporate DT. The investigation’s examination of the nuanced relationship between AI implementation, ownership structure and DT outcomes provides novel insights into the implications of AI in the diverse business contexts. Moreover, the research underscores the policy significance of supporting SOEs in their DT endeavors to prevent their potential lag in the digital economy. Overall, this study accentuates the imperative for businesses to strategically embrace AI technologies as a means to bolster their competitive edge in the contemporary digital landscape.