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This study aims to explore the pandemic's opportunities for enhancing the environmental practices of the food and beverages green supply chains and its effect on the supply chains' viability by exploring the relationship between fear and uncertainty of COVID-19, food and beverages green supply chain management (F&B-GSCM) and supply chains’ viability based on the two dimensions (robustness and resilience) and examine the moderating effect of innovative technology adoption like big data analysis (BDA) capabilities and blockchain technologies (BCT) on this relationship.

This study adopted partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) on a sample of 362 F&B small and medium enterprises (SMEs)’ managers in the Egyptian market for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The empirical results show that the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic have a significant positive effect on green supply chain management (GSCM). Also, BDA moderates the relationship between fear and uncertainty of COVID-19 and GSCM. However, BCT do not moderate that relationship. Similarly, GSCM positively affects supply chain viability dimensions (robustness and resilience). In addition, F&B-GSCM significantly mediates the relationship between fear and uncertainty of COVID-19 and supply chain viability dimensions (robustness and resilience).

Food and beverages (F&B) managers could develop a consistent strategy for applying BCT and BDA to provide clear information and focus on their procedures to meet their stakeholders' needs during COVID-19. Governments and managers should develop a consistent strategy to apply food and beverages supply chains (F&B SCs)' green practices to achieve F&B SCs' resilience and robustness, especially during the pandemic.

The Egyptian F&B SCs have been linked directly with many European countries as a main source of many basic food and agriculture products, which have been affected lately by the pandemic. Based on the “social-cognitive,” “stakeholder” and “resource-based view” theories, this study sheds light on the optimistic side of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it also brings the concepts of F&B-GSCM, SC resilience, SC robustness and innovative technologies back into the light, which helps in solving F&B SC issues and helps to achieve their viability.

The purpose of the study is to examine the crossover effect of leader's role overload on employee's negative affect. More importantly, the stuy will identify the buffering role of self-concordance goal on the relationship between leader's role overload and employee's negative affect.

The study builds the crossover impact of leader's role overload on employee's negative affect as well as the moderating effect of self-concordance goal. By a two-wave and paired data from 51 leaders and 225 employees, the study examines the hypothesis using cross-level analysis.

Results show that leader's role overload tends to reduce negative affect for employees who pursue high-level self-concordance goal and increase negative affect for employees who pursue low-level self-concordance goal.

It is important for employees to get rid of negative affect in the workplace. The study informs managers the benefits of pursuing self-concordance goals in helping employees alleviate the negative effect of leader's role overload.

Findings of the present study can enrich the literature of the crossover process from leader to employee and offer management strategy for enterprises about how to buffer the damaging effect of leader's role overload on employees.

This research aims to profoundly investigate the post-COVID-19's opportunities for customer-centric green supply chain management (GSCM) and perceived customer resilience by studying the correlation between fear-uncertainty of COVID-19, customer-centric GSCM, and the perceived customers' resilience. Moreover, to examine how the perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities moderates the relationship among the variables.

In this study partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted on a sample of 298 managers and customers in the Egyptian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) market for data analysis and hypotheses testing.

Preliminary results indicate that the fear-uncertainty of COVID-19 positively affects customer-centric GSCM. Also, external CSR moderates the association between fear-uncertainty towards COVID-19 and customer-centric GSCM. However, internal CSR does not moderate this relationship. Customer-centric GSCM has a significant positive impact on the perceived environmental and social resilience. However, it has an insignificant effect on the perceived financial resilience. Also, customer-centric GSCM has a significant mediation outcome on the relation between fear-uncertainty of COVID-19 and the perceived environmental and social resilience. However, this relation is insignificant regarding the perceived financial resilience.

Managers could develop a consistent strategy for applying CSR practices, providing clear information and focusing on their procedures to meet their customer needs during COVID-19. Governments and managers should develop a consistent strategy to apply customer-oriented green practices to achieve customers' resilience, especially during the pandemic.

Based on the “social-cognitive,” “stakeholder” and “consumer culture” theories, this study shed light on the optimistic side of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it also brings the concepts of social responsibility, resilience and green practices back into the light, which helps in solving customers' issues and help to achieve their resilience.

The paper aims to propose general design rules and route plan for automated guided vehicle system (AGVS). The AGVS is applied to automated meter verification areas through a case study of meter verification shop floor to verify the feasibility.

The paper gives an appropriate route design for AGVS and proposes an optimized strategy for designed routes and a control system to manage traffic conflict.

This case study indicates that the application of AGVS can highly improve the efficiency of manufacturing and production. Besides, a reasonable transportation plan is beneficial in making the system run smoothly and in cutting conveying time.

The application of AGVS integrates a variety of advanced technologies (i.e. information technology, artificial intelligence, etc.) into the electricity meter verification system, which brings great economic and social benefits via enhancing the verification efficiency and reducing the total labor costs.

The application proposed in the paper solves the problem that the verification almost relies on workers, labor intensity is high and work efficiency is hard to improve. Furthermore, the general rules and strategies of AGVS transportation can be applied not only to the automated electricity meter verification but also in other industrial areas.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mechanism of transmitting economic policy uncertainty (EPU) shocks to capital structure.

The authors adopt a novel approach that bridges the asset pricing implications of EPU and the debt-financing decisions of Chinese firms by introducing a variable “policy-risk-induced equity return” (PRER). PRER is the product of the EPU beta and the EPU shock. Differentiating firms as per the signs of the EPU beta helps to shed light on the deep questions of whether their respective leverage targets and speeds of adjustment are different and how the targets and speeds are determined.

The empirical evidence shows that it is the equity market that channels EPU shocks to capital structure through PRER in China. Firms with positive (negative) EPU betas have PRER impact negatively (positively) the leverage target, conforming to the market-timing theory. EPU and non-policy uncertainty shocks cause the speed of adjustment to change over time. Overall, the intertemporal relation between EPU and leverage is negative. These results are robust to alternative leverage measures and after controlling for non-policy uncertainty shocks and conventional firm characteristics and have implications for academic research, policymaking, market stability, and corporate financing.

This study is the first to probe for, and provide insights into, the underlying reason why EPU impacts capital structure by connecting asset pricing to corporate financing for a large sample of Chinese publicly traded firms.

Numerous researchers have developed theories and studies to uncover the issues pertinent to dividend policy dynamics, but it is still one of the unresolved problems of finance. The purpose of this paper is to focus on a new dimension, i.e., financial expertise on the corporate board for explaining the dividend policy dynamics in the emerging equity markets of China and Pakistan.

The study employs static (fixed effect (FE) and random effect (RE)) and dynamic models – two-step generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation techniques by Arellano and Bond (1991) and Arellano and Bover (1995) – during the timespan from 2009 to 2014. Further, this study re-estimated FE, RE and GMM two-step estimation techniques by excluding the non-dividend-paying companies, and also employed instrumental variable regressing by using two instrumental variables – industry average financial expertise of the board and board size – as proxies for board financial expertise to control the possible endogeneity.

The study reveals that Chinese firms having more financial expertise on the board do not take dividends as a control mechanism (substitution hypothesis), while Pakistani firms support the compliment hypothesis and use dividends as a control mechanism to mitigate agency conflict to protect shareholders’ interests and keep additional funds from the manager’s opportunism. Further robustness models also confirm the presence of a significant association between dividend policy and board financial expertise in both equity markets.

This study introduces the financial expertise on a board as a determinant of dividend policy. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have focused on board-level financial expertise as a contributing factor toward dividend policy.

The purpose of this paper is to fabricate a new Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu interconnection microstructure for electromigration studies in 3D integration.

The Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu interconnection microstructure is fabricated by a three-mask photolithography process with different electroplating processes. This microstructure consists of pads and conductive lines as the bottom layer, Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu pillars with the diameter of 10-40 μm as the middle layer and Cu conductive lines as the top layer. A lift-off process is adopted for the bottom layer. The Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu pillars are fabricated by photolithography with sequential electroplating processes. To fabricate the top layer, a sputtered Cu layer is introduced to prevent the middle-layer photoresist from being developed. With the final Cu electroplating processes, the Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu interconnection microstructure is successfully achieved.

The surface morphology of Cu-Sn pillars consists of densely packed clusters which are formed by an ordered arrangement of tetragonal Sn grains. The diffusion of Cu atoms into the Sn phases is observed at the Cu/Sn interface. Furthermore, the obtained Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu pillars have a flat surface with an average roughness of 13.9 nm. In addition, the introduction of Ni layer between the Sn and the top Cu layers in the Cu-Sn-Ni-Cu pillars can mitigate the diffusion of Cu atoms into Sn phases. The process is verified by checking the electrical performance using four-point probe measurements.

The method described in this paper which combined a three-mask photolithography process with sequential Cu, Sn, Ni and Cu electroplating processes provides a new way to fabricate the interconnection microstructure for future electromigration studies.

The purpose of this paper is to study the operation performance of the high-speed ramjet kinetic energy projectile using solid fuel ramjet as power plant that is a new short-range and small caliber projectile.

The numerical investigation on combustion characteristic of polyethylene in high-speed ramjet kinetic energy projectile is carried out in this paper. The flow characteristics’ differences are analyzed when ramjet works or do not work, and both the combustion characteristics and propulsive performance are analyzed when ramjet works.

The results show that with the increase of the abscissa x, the flame front is close to solid fuel surface at first and then keeps away from solid fuel surface. With the increase of the abscissa x, the temperature of solid fuel surface and regression rate of solid fuel continues to increase before re-attachment point and then decreases, which a maximum locate at the re-attachment point. Both the average temperature and the regression rate on the surface of the solid fuel tend to rise as the increase of inflow Mach number. As the inflow of Mach number increases, the mass flow rate of gaseous fuel increases.

The research results can provide useful database for the subsequent research on high-speed ramjet kinetic energy projectile.

This paper studies the operation characteristics of the ramjet projectile, especially the effect of the change of the flight velocity on the performance of high-speed ramjet projectile.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance of market imperfection, namely, variation in managerial ability (MA), on dividend policy in China. The authors focus on the Chinese market as it is dominated by state-owned enterprises and test whether the association between MA and dividend policy varies systematically with the degree of state ownership.

To measure MA, this study exploits a novel measure developed by Demerjian et al. (2012) to estimate how efficiently manager utilizes firm’s resources. Manager efficiency is defined in terms of output a manager produces based on inputs available within firm.

The authors find that relationship between MA and dividend policy is primarily driven by non-state own enterprises compare to state own enterprises, more prevalent for financially unconstrained firms with strong balance sheet and more pronounced under high marketized groups as compare to low marketized groups. These finding are robust under battery of robustness checks. This research adds new insight for the policy makers and investors to pay more attention on MA.

This research adds new insight for the policy makers and investors to pay more attention on MA.

This study augments the dividend policy literature by relaxing perfect capital market assumption of Miller and Modigliani, and neo-classic view of firms by incorporating a new novel factor – variation in MA – and applies it to the emerging market of China.

The research aims to profoundly investigate the correlation between uncertainty-fear against COVID-19, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and labor practices issues based on ISO 26000.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was adopted for data analysis and hypotheses testing on a sample of 304 managers and employees in the Egyptian small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Preliminary results indicate that the uncertainty-fear against COVID-19 positively affects CSR practices in SMEs. CSR positively impacts labor practices dimensions. However, CSR has an insignificant effect on the social protection and work condition dimension. Also, CSR has a significant mediating role in the association between uncertainty-fear toward the pandemic and labor practices. But, this relation is insignificant regarding social protection and work condition dimension.

Managers could develop a consistent strategy for applying CSR practices, providing clear information and focusing on their procedures to protect their workforce during COVID-19. Governments should impose policies to guarantee that all employees have the same opportunities and not discriminate directly or indirectly in any labor practice.

Based on both the “stakeholder” and “social-cognitive” theories, this study shed light on the optimistic side of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it also brings the concepts of social responsibility, sustainability and green practices back into the light, which helps in solving labor issues.