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Power use widely exists in buyer–supplier relationships (BSRs). Different directions of power use (i.e. buyer's power use and supplier's power use) intertwining with different types of power (i.e. coercive and noncoercive power) make it insufficient to regard power use as a single construct when examining its effect on a firm's following response. Besides, interdependence structure characterized by joint dependence and dependence asymmetry may influence the effect of a specific power use by shaping the firm's interpretation and cognition toward the relationship. Specifically, this study examines how four types of power use a buyer facing and an interdependence structure with its supplier affect its specific investments to the supplier.

This study tests the proposed relationships using regression analysis, based on data from 240 manufacturing firms in China on their perceived relationships with their major suppliers.

Results show that buyer's coercive power use (BCP) negatively affects buyer's specific investments while noncoercive power use (BNP) does not play a significant role. Both supplier's coercive power use (SCP) and noncoercive power use (SNP) are positively related to buyer's specific investments. Joint dependence positively moderates the effect of BNP and dependence asymmetry negatively moderates the effects of BCP and SNP on buyer's specific investments.

This study contributes to the literature on power use by identifying different types of power use and their different roles in influencing buyer's specific investments. The study also contributes to the literature on interdependence structure by demonstrating the different roles of joint dependence and dependence asymmetry.

Power is central to inter-organizational relationships. The literature distinguishes between structural power (i.e. dependence) and behavioral power (i.e. use of power), yet few studies considered them simultaneously. Opportunism is generally linked to use of power, but it remains unclear whether use of power deters or invites opportunism. In this study, the authors treat dependence as a driver of use of power and opportunism as its outcome, and empirically test relationships among dependence, power, and opportunism from both buyer and supplier perspectives. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study examines how buyer and supplier dependence influence the other’s and their own use of coercive and non-coercive power, which lead to opportunism of two parties, based on data from 240 companies in China on their perceived relationships with major suppliers.

Results show that buyer/supplier dependence is positively related to supplier’s/buyer’s use of coercive and non-coercive power. Buyer’s and supplier’s use of coercive power also positively influences their opportunism. Buyer’s use of non-coercive power is negatively related to both partners’ opportunism, whereas supplier’s use of non-coercive power is not significantly related to either partner’s opportunism.

This study contributes to literature in two ways. First, the authors distinguish the structural aspect of power from its behavioral aspect and demonstrate that dependence, which represents structural power, generates different patterns of influence on use of coercive and non-coercive power when considered from buyer’s and supplier’s perspectives. Second, the authors reexamine relationships between use of power and opportunism and show that buyers and suppliers react differently to use of different types of power.

Manufacturers’ specific investments (SIs) in a specific partner that are of lower value when used in an alternative relationship, such as training employees and tailoring systems to achieve better cooperation, can help improve market performance. However, previous studies lack a simultaneous focus on a manufacturer’s SIs in its upstream and downstream partners. The purpose of this study is to address the effects of manufacturers’ SIs in their suppliers and customers on the two types of innovation and market performance individually and jointly and the mediating effects of radical and incremental innovation on relationships between SIs and market performance.

This study tests proposed relationships based on data collected from 206 manufacturers in China using regression methods.

Results show that SIs in customers directly and indirectly affect market performance through radical and incremental innovation. However, SIs in suppliers cannot directly improve market performance but indirectly enhance market performance through radical innovation. Furthermore, results also show the interaction of SIs in suppliers and customers is positively related to market performance and radical innovation.

This study contributes to the literature on SIs by identifying supply chain SIs (SCSIs) through simultaneously focusing on SIs in suppliers and customers and exploring the direct and indirect effects of SCSIs on market performance. This study also contributes to the innovation literature by empirically verifying incremental and radical innovation as effective intermediaries that help convert SIs into the actual performance improvement.

The purpose of this study is to empirically explore the effects and interaction effect of human resources and digital manufacturing technologies (DMTs) on supply chain integration (SCI) and how their roles are influenced by competition.

Drawing on the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, this study builds and tests a holistic model based on the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS) project database.

The results show that human resources and DMTs have significant positive effects on three dimensions of SCI. Competition positively moderates the effects of human resources on customer integrations, negatively moderates the effects of human resource on internal integration, but does not moderate the effects of human resources on supplier integration. Besides, the moderating effect of competition has not been found in the relationships between DMTs and three SCI dimensions.

By investigating the effects of human resources and DMTs on SCI practices in the context of competition, this study contributes to the literature on SCI, DMTs and the TOE framework as well as offers practical insights that help manufacturing firms to promote SCI more effectively and efficiently.

Digitalization encourages the manufacturer to engage in inter-organizational technological activities (i.e. supplier IT integration and supply visibility) with its major supplier, which influences supply chain (SC) governance. This study tests a moderated mediation model that considers supplier IT integration and supply visibility as mediators between supply-side digitalization and supplier opportunism, and relational ties as a moderator in the relationship between inter-organizational technological activities and supplier opportunism.

Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is used to examine data from 200 firms in China describing their supply chain management (SCM) practices and perceived relationships with their major suppliers.

Supply-side digitalization is positively related to supplier IT integration and supply visibility. Supply-side digitalization has a positive indirect effect on supplier opportunism through supplier IT integration but a negative indirect effect through supply visibility. Relational ties weaken the positive effect of supplier IT integration and the positive indirect effect of supply-side digitalization on supplier opportunism. Relational ties also weaken the negative effect of supply visibility and the negative indirect effect of supply-side digitalization on supplier opportunism.

This study enriches understanding of SC governance in the digital age by empirically confirming that digital transformation brings both challenges and opportunities to SC governance and by clarifying the interplay of relational governance and technological activities. In addition, this study contributes to the SC digitalization literature by empirically validating the role of digitalization in promoting inter-organizational technological activities, as well as by revealing its potential dark side.

A chaotic system is a nonlinear deterministic system that displays complex, noisy‐like and unpredictable behavior. The interest in chaotic systems lies mostly upon their complex, unpredictable behavior, and extreme sensitivity to initial conditions as well as parameter variations. Based on wavelet neural network's (WNN) online approximation ability, the purpose of this paper is to propose an adaptive Gaussian wavelet neural control (AGWNC) system to control a chaotic system.

The proposed AGWNC system is composed of a wavelet neural controller and a compensation tangent controller. The wavelet neural controller utilizes a Gaussian WNN to mimic an ideal controller, and the compensation tangent controller is designed to compensate the approximation error between the ideal and the wavelet neural controllers. The controller parameters of the proposed AGWNC can online tune in the Lyapunov sense, thus the uniformly ultimately bounded stability of closed‐loop system can be guaranteed.

The proposed AGWNC system is applied to a chaotic system. Simulation results are used to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of the proposed AGWNC scheme. Simulation results show that not only the favorable control performance can be achieved but also the control efforts without any chattering phenomena. Moreover, all controller parameters can be online tuning by the derived adaptive laws based on the Lyapunov function.

The proposed AGWNC approach is interesting for the design of an intelligent control scheme. The main contributions of this paper are: the overall closed‐loop control system is globally stable in uniform ultimate boundedness; the tracking error can be asymptotically attenuated to a desired small level around zero by appropriate chosen parameters and learning rates; and the AGWNC system can achieve favorable tracking performance.

The purpose of this research is to explore the nature of virtual tipping in live game streaming from the perspective of tippers.

This qualitative research involved six naturalistic group interviews with 27 young adult game streaming tippers in China.

The research revealed a typology of four virtual tipping exchanges – perfunctory exchange, transactional (commodity) exchange, relational (gift) exchange and hybrid exchange. The most notable finding is hybrid exchange, a synergistic hybrid of transaction and gift-giving.

The authors recommend that both streamers and streaming platforms acknowledge and accommodate both transactional and relational tipping motivations. The authors also recommend platforms to recruit skillful streamers with high emotional intelligence to better convert perfunctory tippers into tippers who tip more generously.

The result of hybrid exchange suggests going beyond the traditional commodity vs gift dichotomy to examine the potential market-gift complementary in a single exchange in the sharing economy.

The chapter pays specific attention to the organizing and reorganizing process of the embedding of new technology. The aim is to increase the understanding of how a focal technology is incrementally aligned into a customer’s different business settings. Embedding becomes subject to intense organizing efforts. It becomes a struggle with activating different features of the focal technology by forging and modifying the resource interfaces between the focal technology and customer resources.

The organizing efforts are about seeking, in an explorative mood, for resource interfaces between the focal technology and the customer resources. This organizing process enables the identification of new adaptation opportunities for technology embedding processes, whereby the focal technology obtains certain feature and values.

A systematically developed knowledge of resource interfaces is a key for activating different features of the focal technology and thereby facilitating its embedding into the customer’s various business settings. This is described in a single case study in the chapter. This case and the analysis show how a supplier and a customer struggle with developing resource interface knowledge to activate the different features of the focal technology, thereby facilitating its embedding process. The first part of the chapter establishes a theoretical framework, followed in the second part by the case study and analysis. The concluding discussion emphasizes the importance of understanding and managing various interfaces as part of the organizing processes.

This paper attempts to put forward a convincing and flexible grey cluster method that can be used in confirming credibility level of trustworthy software development process.

Determination on credibility level in the software development process is dynamic, as credibility of the results may be different at different times and under different project requirements. Qualitative methods are not entirely convincing, and most quantitative methods are not flexible enough. Grey cluster based on nonlinear grey whitening weight function put forward in this paper is both convincing and flexible. Finally eight projects from the ISBSG database are used for empirical analysis, which confirm that the method put forward in this paper is available and credible.

The results are convincing: not only that grey cluster based on nonlinear grey whitening weight function put forward in this paper is both convincing and flexible, but it can be used in confirming credibility level of trustworthy software development process.

Eight projects from the ISBSG database are used for empirical analysis, which confirms that the method put forward in this paper is available and credible.

Nonlinear grey whitening weight function is derivable except endpoint. Grey cluster based on nonlinear grey whitening weight function put forward in this paper is both convincing and flexible.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a novel GM(0, N) model based on grey number sequences and to solve the problem of cost forecasting of commercial aircraft which puzzled managers, especially the factors of cost with uncertain information.

Based on the definition of traditional GM(0, N) model, the paper considers the limited information and knowledge, and the algorithm of grey numbers with greyness and kernel was designed. A novel GM(0, N) model based on grey number sequences, named the IN‐GM(0, N) model, is proposed according to the definition of the grey numbers algorithm. The steps of the proposed model are then given. Finally, a case of domestic commercial aircrafts is developed as an example, based on information gathering and model calculating.

The results of this research indicate that the IN‐GM(0,N) model is effective in cost calculating, providing reliable technical support for cost estimation of large‐scale complex equipment including commercial aircraft.

Cost forecasting of commercial aircraft can be solved effectively and the model can also be utilized to predicate other products.

The paper succeeds in constructing a novel grey forecasting model. This work contributes significantly to improving grey forecasting theory and to undoubtedly propose more novel grey forecasting models.