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This paper aims to investigate the influence of stearate types on the thickening ability, dropping point and fiber structure of greases.

Several greases were prepared from polyolefins and various stearates. The melting point of the stearates and the dropping point of the resultant greases were measured, and the intermolecular binding energies of the thickener and the radial distribution function of the metal–oxygen in the thickener were determined with the aid of molecular simulation. The microstructures of the greases were also analyzed via scanning electron microscopy.

A higher stearate binding energy was found to correlate to a higher dropping point of the resultant greases. The thickening ability of the stearate is related to the group and period of the constituent metal ion. Within a group, greater atomic numbers of the metal were correlated to lower thickening ability. In a period, as the atomic number of the metal increased, the thickening ability was enhanced. The radial distribution functions of metal and oxygen can explain the aggregation of the stearate thickeners in the grease.

This work compared the thickening capacity of several stearates. Guidelines for preparing stearates to tailor the resultant grease are presented.

Opinion mining (OM), also known as “sentiment classification”, which aims to discover common patterns of user opinions from their textual statements automatically or semi-automatically, is not only useful for customers, but also for manufacturers. However, because of the complexity of natural language, there are still some problems, such as domain dependence of sentiment words, extraction of implicit features and others. The purpose of this paper is to propose an OM method based on topic maps to solve these problems.

Domain-specific knowledge is key to solve problems in feature-based OM. On the one hand, topic maps, as an ontology framework, are composed of topics, associations, occurrences and scopes, and can represent a class of knowledge representation schemes. On the other hand, compared with ontology, topic maps have many advantages. Thus, it is better to integrate domain-specific knowledge into OM based on topic maps. This method can make full use of the semantic relationships among feature words and sentiment words.

In feature-level OM, most of the existing research associate product features and opinions by their explicit co-occurrence, or use syntax parsing to judge the modification relationship between opinion words and product features within a review unit. They are mostly based on the structure of language units without considering domain knowledge. Only few methods based on ontology incorporate domain knowledge into feature-based OM, but they only use the “is-a” relation between concepts. Therefore, this paper proposes feature-based OM using topic maps. The experimental results revealed that this method can improve the accuracy of the OM. The findings of this study not only advance the state of OM research but also shed light on future research directions.

To demonstrate the “feature-based OM using topic maps” applications, this work implements a prototype that helps users to find their new washing machines.

This paper presents a new method of feature-based OM using topic maps, which can integrate domain-specific knowledge into feature-based OM effectively. This method can improve the accuracy of the OM greatly. The proposed method can be applied across various application domains, such as e-commerce and e-government.

This paper aims to explore the impact of family ownership, and family commitment on employees' organizational identification (EOI) with Chinese family firms, and to test the mediating effect of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on this relationship.

The result reveals that family commitment positively influences employees’ organizational identification (EOI) with Chinese family firms. It is also shown that insiders’ responsibility (i.e. investors’ and employees’ responsibility) and public responsibility (i.e. community responsibility) positively influence EOI, and partially mediate the relationship between family commitment and EOI with Chinese family firms. In addition, the result indicates that family ownership positively influences insiders’ responsibility (i.e. investors’, and employees’ responsibility), outsiders’ responsibility (i.e. consumers’ responsibility), environmental responsibility and legal and ethical responsibility, and family commitment positively moderates the relationship between family ownership and insiders’ responsibility (i.e. investors’ and employees’ responsibility), outsiders’ responsibility (i.e. partners’ and consumers’ responsibility) and public responsibility (i.e. environmental responsibility) in Chinese family firms.

This study is the first to examine empirically the relationship between family involvement (i.e. family ownership, family commitment) and EOI from the viewpoint of CSR in Chinese family firms. The study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between family involvement and EOI, as well as the understanding of the influence of CSR on EOI with Chinese family firms.

This study aims to examine if the participation of live-stream influencers (LSIs) affects tipping frequency on live streaming platforms, and further investigate the mediating and moderating mechanisms.

Quasi-experiment and difference-in-differences models are used for data analysis. Propensity score matching is used to address potential unobservable endogeneity.

Real-time live streaming data reveal that LSIs’ participation significantly improves tipping frequency in live streaming rooms. Also, more users are attracted to the live streaming rooms and more users become active in participation. Additionally, the positive impact of LSIs’ participation is enhanced in the live streaming rooms with a greater number of relationship links between users.

The findings clarify the new role of influencers and reveal the mechanisms on how LSIs benefit the platforms.

The findings offer novel insights into implementing influencer marketing to interactive social media platforms, by encouraging influencer participation, user relationship building and influencer network growth.

This study highlights the value of LSIs for interactive social media platforms in terms of organic growth, revenue generation and cost reduction.

Leader secure-base support, consisting of leader availability, noninterference and encouragement of growth, has important implications for stimulating employee proactivity. This study is aimed at examining whether, why and when leader secure-base support may motivate employees to engage in approach job crafting behavior. Drawing upon regulatory focus theory, we propose leader secure-base support is positively associated with employee approach job crafting via employee state promotion focus. Based on cue consistency theory, we further examine the moderating role of organizational learning culture in the associations of leader secure-base support with employee state promotion focus and subsequent approach job crafting.

Two-wave data were collected from 281 Chinese workers. Path analyses with Mplus 7 were conducted to test the hypotheses.

As predicted, we found that leader secure-base support was positively related to employee state promotion focus and, in turn, facilitated employee approach job crafting. Moreover, organizational learning culture accentuated the impact of leader secure-base support on employee job crafting process.

This study is the first to examine the influence of leader secure-base support on employee job crafting. It also identifies a boundary condition for such an influence.

The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of vapor assembly sequence and assembly temperature on the corrosion protection of the complex silane films Al alloy. The performance and application range of silane films are enhanced.

The complex silane films were successfully prepared on the surface of aluminum alloy using via vapor phase assembly of 1,2,3-benzotriazole (BTA) and dodecyltrimethoxysilanes (DTMS). The protection of the assembly films against corrosion of Al alloy is investigated by the electrochemical measurements and the alkaline solution accelerated corrosion test. Thickness and hydrophobicity of the complex films are studied using ellipsometric spectroscopy and contact angle tests.

It shows that the anti-corrosion ability of the complex films is overall superior to that of the single-component assembled films. DTMS-BTA films have larger thickness and best anti-corrosion ability. The alkyl chains in DTMS have better compatibility with BTA molecules. The rigid BTA molecule can permeate into the long alkyl chain of DTMS as fillers and improve the barrier properties of the complex films.

In this paper, a green and efficient method of vapor phase assembly is proposed to rust prevention during manufacture of Al alloy workpiece.

To reconcile the mixed findings on commitment-oriented human resource management (HRM) on employee job performance, this study tests whether commitment-oriented HRM has a threshold effect on employee job performance and when this threshold effect matters. The authors further tested the role of employees' age in the relationships.

The authors conducted a survey and collected data from 601 employees in 32 firms in China, and used a multilevel approach to test the hypothesis.

The results showed that the association between commitment-oriented HRM and employee job performance was J-shaped, meaning that commitment-oriented HRM was positively related to job performance when the degree of commitment-oriented HRM exceeded a threshold. Moreover, the authors found that employee age moderated this J-shape relationship. Specifically, the curvilinear relationship between development commitment-oriented HRM and job performance was stronger in younger employees. Contrary to our prediction, the results showed that younger employees reacted more strongly to improve job performance than older employees when maintenance commitment-oriented HRM exceeded a moderate degree.

The findings on the J-shape effect and moderating role of employee age on the J-shape provided critical insights into understanding the mixed results of the effect of HRM. Additionally, this study provided new insight in the linkage between HRM practices and employee outcomes.

This paper extends the current literature on app engagement to identify dynamic factors that affect app engagement and the value-creation pathway that connect these factors with app engagement.

Survey data were collected from 299 app users to test the proposed research model.

The study found that the perceived effectiveness of evolution content and that of evolution speed impose both individual and joint positive effects on app identity, which serves as the mediation mechanism that connects these dynamic factors with app engagement.

This study takes the user perspective to explore how user perceptions of the effectiveness of app evolution content and speed, which represent unique user experiences in the app context, cultivate app engagement by enhancing app identity. Specifically, this study reveals the intertwined relationship among perceived effectiveness of app evolution, app identity, and app engagement.

The purpose of the study is to propose a normative approach for market segmentation, profile and monitoring using computing and information technology to analyze User-Generated Content (UGC).

The specific steps include performing a structural analysis of the UGC and extracting the base variables and values from it, generating a consumer characteristics matrix for segmenting process, and finally describing the segments' preferences, regional and dynamic characteristics. The authors verify the feasibility of the method with publicly available data. The external validity of the method is also tested through questionnaires and product regional sales data.

The authors apply the proposed methodology to analyze 53,526 UGCs in the New Energy Vehicle (NEV) market and classify consumers into four segments: Brand-Value Suitors (32%), Rational Consumers (21%), High-Quality Fanciers (26%) and Utility-driven Consumers (21%). The authors describe four segments' preferences, dynamic changes over the past six years and regional characteristics among China's top five sales cities. Then, the authors verify the external validity of the methodology through a questionnaire survey and actual NEV sales in China.

The proposed method enables companies to utilize computing and information technology to understand the market structure and grasp the dynamic trends of market segments, which assists them in developing R&D and marketing plans.

This study contributes to the research on UGC-based universal market segmentation methods. In addition, the proposed UGC structural analysis algorithm implements a more fine-grained data analysis.

Employees play an essential role in interactive innovation activities in Open Innovation Communities (OICs). Nevertheless, the factors influencing employees' innovation behavior in OICs have not been studied in depth. This study selects personality traits and social network characteristics to explain why and how these two factors affect employees' innovation behavior in OICs.

Three regression models were constructed to test the relationship between personality traits, social network characteristics, and interactive innovation behaviors. The authors examined how employees' personality traits (Big Five personality traits) influence employees' innovative behavior (initiating and supporting innovation) directly in OICs and explored whether social network characteristics (social group) mediate the relationship between employees' personality traits and employees' innovation behavior.

Using empirical data on 162 employees from Salesforce's IdeaExchange, the authors found that extraversion and openness to experience have significant positive effects on employees' interactive innovation behaviors, while conscientiousness has a significant negative effect on employees' interactive innovation behaviors in OICs. Furthermore, the mediation effect test results indicated that social network characteristics have a mediating effect on the relationship between extraversion and innovative behavior, and between openness and innovative behavior.

This study analyzes how personality traits influence innovation behavior in an open innovation environment, thus enriching research related to the factors influencing interactive innovation behavior. Meanwhile, the study integrates personality, social network, and innovative behavior research streams and clearly explains the relationship between the three variables. The research findings assist firms in selecting suitable employees to participate in interactive innovation behaviors in OICs.