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Introduction: The idea of sustainability has become increasingly popular across many industries. To meet the demands of the present without compromising the capacity of future generations to meet their requirements, sustainable organisations prioritise integrating environmental, social, and economic aspects into their operations.

Purpose: To analyse the inter-relationship between sustainable organisations, high-potential employees (HPEs), and blended learning (BL) effectiveness. Organisations can gain a competitive edge, spur innovation, and contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive future by incorporating sustainability into their operations and offering sustainable workspaces.

Design/methodology/approach: This research approach offers a thorough understanding of the connections between sustainable organisations, HPEs, and workspaces by combining a literature review of 77 research papers, case studies, and surveys.

Findings: The dedication to sustainability draws high-potential workers and environmentally aware customers who favour supporting socially conscientious businesses.

Practical implications: The study provides valuable implications and suggestions for businesses looking to improve their sustainability and recruit top talent. These proposals should include the techniques for integrating sustainability into organisational culture, employee engagement programmes, talent recruiting and retention tactics, and designing environmentally friendly workspaces.

Originality/value: This research approach offers a thorough understanding of the connections between sustainable organisations, HPEs, and workspaces by combining literature reviews, case studies, surveys, interviews, and data analysis.

This paper aims to systematically demonstrate a methodology to determine the relative and absolute encapsulation efficiencies (α_Re and α_Ab) for thermally- and chemically-robust inorganic pigments, typically like ZrSiO₄-based pigments, thereby enhancing their coloring performance.

The authors designed a route, surplus alkali-decomposition and subsequently strong-acid dissolution (SAD2) to completely decompose three classic zircon pigments (Pr–ZrSiO₄, Fe₂O₃@ZrSiO₄ and CdS@ZrSiO₄) into clear solutions and preferably used inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) to determine the concentrations of host elements and chromophores, thereby deriving the numeric data and interrelation of α_Re and α_Ab.

Zircon pigments can be thoroughly decomposed into some dissoluble zirconate–silicate resultants by SAD2 at a ratio of the fluxing agent to pigment over 6. ICP-OES is proved more suitable than some other quantification techniques in deriving the compositional concentrations, thereby the values of α_Re and α_Ab, and their transformation coefficient K_RA, which maintains stably within 0.8–0.9 in Fe₂O₃@ZrSiO₄ and CdS@ZrSiO₄ and is slightly reduced to 0.67–0.85 in Pr–ZrSiO₄.

The SAD2 method and encapsulation efficiencies are well applicable for both zircon pigments and the other pigmental or non-pigmental inhomogeneous systems in characterizing their accurate composition.

The authors herein first proposed strict definitions for the relative and absolute encapsulation efficiencies for inorganic pigments, developed a relatively stringent methodology to determine their accurate values and interrelation.

Value creation in engineering projects has received considerable research attention. However, buyers’ expectations regarding project value do not always translate into the actions of project team members (actors). Drawing upon resource orchestration theory to explore the micro-foundations of project value creation (PVC), we investigate how suppliers organize project team members to create project value that meets buyers’ expectations.

We adopted two instructive engineering projects as comparative cases to analyze patterns in actor interactions in PVC.

The results reveal “social interaction-based value creation” and “structural interaction-based value creation,” which explain the PVC process from the collective-level buyer’s expectations and supplier’s value orientation, to individual-level actor interactions (mobilizing, connecting, and networking), knowledge orchestration activities (structuring, bundling, and leveraging), and finally the value creation process (identifying, configuring, and generating) in project teams to generate collective-level project benefits and values.

We propose a macro-approach to micro-foundations, with a focus on the buyer-expected PVC process on the supplier side. Furthermore, we explain how suppliers organize individual actions and orchestrate the individual knowledge through two patterns of individual-level actor interactions for collective-level PVC.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between tourism efficiency at the city level and the quality of life (QOL) of residents. It focuses on assessing whether more efficient tourism cities in China, from an economic standpoint, also offer a higher quality of life for their residents.

A sample of 40 Chinese cities from 2010 to 2019 is analyzed. The study first employs Data Envelopment Analysis to construct a production technology and estimate the technical tourism efficiency of each city. Subsequently, a nonparametric statistical test of independence is applied yearly to explore potential relationships between the cities’ tourism efficiency rankings and their residents’ QOL. This latter is measured by constructing an index for each city following the OECD framework.

The findings of the study are mixed, revealing no clear relationship between tourism efficiency and residents’ quality of life within the analyzed period. This suggests a complex interplay between economic efficiency in tourism and the broader social and environmental factors contributing to QOL.

This study enhances the literature on tourism efficiency by investigating the relationship between tourism efficiency and QOL, an aspect frequently overlooked in efficiency evaluations. Our approach offers a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between economic performance in the tourism sector and the social well-being of city populations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first instance where such a relationship has been explored at the city level within the Chinese context.

This study investigates lecturers’ challenges in guiding students’ final scientific work online during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the impact of lecturers’ digital technology proficiency on the students’ ability to compile their thoughts and produce scientific work independently.

The study involved 45 lecturers and 140 students. Data was collected through online surveys using the Google Forms application and focus group discussions. The data were analysed qualitatively and interpretively based on the surveys and interviews.

The findings reveal three modes of mentoring: online, mixed, and offline. Many lecturers’ reluctance to use digital technology for mentoring stems from their lack of proficiency, resulting in mixed mentoring methods. This digital inadequacy affects students’ ability to write scientific work independently, as they are not accustomed to self-directed learning. The pandemic has necessitated more independent work from students, with limited physical guidance from lecturers, leading to a decline in the quality of scientific writing.

This paper contains the latest information related to students' scientific writing activities. Student scientific writing activities are disrupted because supervisors do not have the skills to use technology in the remote student mentoring process. Lecturers are not skilled at using technology in carrying out online tutoring assignments.

Smallholders are essential in ensuring food security; however, smallholder-dominated food production often involves high resource-environmental costs. This study analyzed the factors that differentiate horticultural practices, willingness to adopt technology and social networks between optimized practices (OPT) and farmer practices (FP) to provide localized and systematic solutions for the sustainable apple production.

To explore the approach of smallholder-dominated sustainable apple production, 257 apple producers in the Bohai Bay region, a major apple planting area in China, were investigated. Life cycle assessment (LCA), emergy analysis and social network analysis methods were used for evaluation.

The results showed that the net economic profit and emergy sustainability index (ESI) in OPT was 15.8 × 104 RMB·ha-1 and 1.2, respectively, which were 126.9 and 128.0% higher than FP. In contrast, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under OPT was 29.3% lower than those under FP. OPT has a higher percentage of adoption of scientific fertilizer application and water-saving irrigation technologies compared to FP. OPT has strong learning abilities, more social resources (such as technical training and sharing technical experience with others) and connections with stakeholders in the apple supply chain. Optimizing smallholders' social capital, willingness to adopt technology, behavioral willingness and technological awareness can promote sustainable apple production.

Considering the horticultural practices employed by smallholders in conjunction with their social networks, these factors contributed to the transition of smallholder-led apple production toward sustainability. The findings provided viable options and a theoretical basis for smallholder-dominated crop production to move toward sustainability, with significant implications for policymakers.

This study aims to investigate the wetting behavior of AgCuTi and AgCu filler metals on selective laser melting (SLMed) Ti/TiB₂, and to analyze the microstructure and fracture characteristics of SLMed Ti/TiB₂/AgCuTi or AgCu alloy/SLMed Ti/TiB₂ brazed joints. The wetting behavior of AgCuTi and AgCu filler metals on the selective laser melted (SLMed) Ti/TiB₂ has been studied. The analysis of microstructures and fracture characteristics in vacuum-brazed SLMed Ti/TiB₂ substrate, using AgCuTi and AgCu filler metals, has been conducted to elucidate the influence of brazing temperature and alloy composition on the shear strength of the brazed joints.

Brazing SLMed-Ti/TiB₂ in a vacuum using AgCuTi and AgCu filler metals, this study aims to explore the optimal parameters for brazed joints at various brazing temperatures (800°C−950°C).

The findings suggest that elevated brazing temperatures lead to a more extensive diffusion region in the joint as a result of the partial melting of the filler metal. The joint composition changes from distinct Ti₂Cu layer/TiCu layer/filler metal to a-Ti (ss) + ß-Ti (ss)/TiCu. As the brazing temperature increases, the fracture mode shifts from brittle cleavage to ductile fracture, mainly attributed to a decrease in the CuTi within the brazed joint. This change in fracture behavior indicates an improvement in the ductility and toughness of the joint.

The originality of this study lies in the comprehensive analysis of the microstructure and shear strength of vacuum brazing SLMed Ti/TiB₂ using AgCuTi and AgCu filler metals.

Collaborative robots (cobots) are widely used in various manipulation tasks within complex industrial environments. However, the manipulation capabilities of cobot manipulation planning are reduced by task, environment and joint physical constraints, especially in terms of force performance. Existing motion planning methods need to be more effective in addressing these issues. To overcome these challenges, the authors propose a novel method named force manipulability-oriented manipulation planning (FMMP) for cobots.

This method integrates force manipulability into a bidirectional sampling algorithm, thus planning a series of paths with high force manipulability while satisfying constraints. In this paper, the authors use the geometric properties of the force manipulability ellipsoid (FME) to determine appropriate manipulation configurations. First, the authors match the principal axes of FME with the task constraints at the robot’s end effector to determine manipulation poses, ensuring enhanced force generation in the desired direction. Next, the authors use the volume of FME as the cost function for the sampling algorithm, increasing force manipulability and avoiding kinematic singularities.

Through experimental comparisons with existing algorithms, the authors validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that the FMMP significantly improves the force performance of cobots under task, environmental and joint physical constraints.

To improve the force performance of manipulation planning, the FMMP introduces the FME into sampling-based path planning and comprehensively considers task, environment and joint physical constraints. The proposed method performs satisfactorily in experiments, including assembly and in situ measurement.

The silicone modifications of two-component epoxy resin coatings are commonly built on epoxy resins rather than on epoxy curing agents. The silicone-modified epoxy curing agent system is rarely reported yet. This study aims to prepare the polysiloxane (PS)-modified waterborne epoxy coatings based on aqueous curing agents technology.

Waterborne epoxy curing agents with different contents of terminal epoxy PS were synthesized by reacting with triethylenetetramine, followed by incorporating of epoxy resin (NPEL-128) and polyethylene glycol diglycidyl ether. The waterborne epoxy coatings were prepared with the above curing agents, and their performance was investigated through thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, mechanical characterization, gloss measurement, chemical resistance test and ultraviolet (UV) aging experiment.

The results showed that the epoxy coating prepared by silicon-modified curing agent has higher gloss, better chemical resistance and UV resistance than the coating from unmodified curing agent with terminal epoxy PS and commercially available waterborne epoxy curing agent (Aradur 3986), as well as the competitive mechanical properties and heat resistance. Reduced water absorption on fibrous paper was also obtained with the help of silicon-modified curing agent.

These findings will be valuable for resin researchers in addressing the modification issues about waterborne epoxy resin and curing agent.

The purpose of this study is to propose a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model to explore whether social media affordances and media richness as environmental stimuli to learners’ involvement elicited by massive open online courses (MOOCs) can affect their learning persistence in MOOCs and, in turn, their learning outcomes in MOOCs. This study further examines whether demographic variables can moderate the relationship between learners’ learning persistence in MOOCs and their learning outcomes.

Sample data for this study were collected from learners who had experience in taking MOOCs provided by the MOOCs platform launched by a well-known university in Taiwan, and 396 usable questionnaires were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

This study proved that learners’ perceived social media affordances and media richness in MOOCs positively influenced their cognitive involvement and affective involvement elicited by MOOCs, which concurrently expounded their learning persistence in MOOCs and, in turn, uplifted their learning outcomes in MOOCs. The results support all proposed hypotheses and the research model, respectively, explains 70.5% and 61.8% of the variance in learners’ learning persistence in MOOCs and learning outcomes. Besides, this study showed that learners’ usage experience moderated the relationship between learners’ learning persistence in MOOCs and their learning outcomes.

This study uses the S-O-R model as a theoretical groundwork to construct learners’ learning outcomes in MOOCs as a series of the psychological process, which is affected by social media affordances and media richness. Noteworthily, while the S-O-R model has been extensively used in previous literature, little research uses the S-O-R model to explain the media antecedents of learners’ learning persistence and learning outcomes in MOOCs. Hence, this study enriches the research for understanding how learners value their learning gains via using media features to support them in MOOCs.