Search results

Because of the sharply growing interest worldwide of “hard” physical-mechanical robot systems for the execution of on-site construction tasks [i.e. single-task construction robots (STCRs)], the purpose of this study is to equip development projects with a systematic design-management system model that allows to integrate the different needs and aims of stakeholders.

This paper proposes a STCR-technology management system (STCR-TMS) for the complete development cycle of STCR designs. The STCR-TMS is based on established principles from systems engineering and management and STCR-specific activities developed and tested by the authors as standalone elements in previous research work.

The application of the STCR-TMS revealed the practicability of the method and the underlying concepts to provide practical guidance for the development process. Additional findings indicate that the method is sufficiently generic and flexible for application to different types of robots and indifferent world regions. This research has also shown that key activities need to be addressed to increase the practicability of the STCR-TMS.

A unique characteristic of this method is the evolution with each utilization cycle. In addition, individual elements are interchangeable and can be adapted based on external circumstances. These properties allow the TMS to be applied to other fields in construction robotics. With the progression of the verification and validation of the method, know-how and certain elements can be fed into standardization activities (e.g. establishing a management system standard).

The purpose of this study is to map different kinds of tensions in product innovation and investigate how top managers use communication to shape subordinates' attention and thereby respond to these tensions.

This study adopted an embedded case study of four innovation centers within a Nordic multinational firm.

This study identifies three kinds of tensions that reside in product innovation, namely dilemma, paradox and trade-off. Further, this study reveals how joint attention (among top managers and subordinates) as a response to tensions can be achieved through different aggregates of top managers' communication efforts.

In opening the black box of tensions in product innovation and identifying multiple tensions, this study contributes to advancing the understanding of the attention-based view. Different from previous studies that simply consider communication as channels for information processing, the findings indicate that the contents and practices of communication can help top managers to shape subordinates' attention and thereby respond to tensions. This study also extends the research focus of attention from top managers to the whole organization, by revealing the importance of building a joint pattern of attention among top managers and subordinates.

The aims of this study are to conduct a systematic review of public–private partnership (PPP) studies published from 2009 to 2019, to compare the results with Ke et al. (2009) who reviewed the PPP literature published from 1998 to 2008, and to trace the evolution of the PPP knowledge in the past two decades. This study also presents the possible directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future, arguably.

This study carried out a top journal-based search to identify the quality PPP articles published from 2009 to 2019. A total of 12 top-tier construction journals were systematically searched in the database of web of science (WOS), from which 279 PPP articles were identified for review.

The number of the identified articles, the titles of the journals, institutions, the most cited papers, and prevalent research methods were analyzed and compared. The existing PPP studies in construction journals were classified into seven streams. Through analysis of the PPP research status and gaps, five future research directions were revealed.

This study contributes to the current body of knowledge by revealing the research trend of PPP from 2009 to 2019. It presents the change of PPP development trend in the past decade through comparison with Ke et al. (2009). It also reveals the major research streams and points out the directions that the PPP research may go towards in the future. Moreover, this study is helpful to the practice as well. It can enhance the practitioners' understanding of the PPP development in the past decade. In addition, it identified the research institutions contributing the most in the area of PPP, which may serve as valuable reference for practitioners to locate the best institutions for consultancy or collaboration.

This study aims to understand the formal and informal practices of top managers as they seek to control product innovation processes and how the style of control used differs during development stages and gates.

A qualitative in-depth case study was conducted at a multinational corporation (pseudonym: MEC). The authors examined 12 product innovation projects and carried out semi-structured interviews to understand the experiences, perceptions and challenges of the people involved in product development projects with a focus on the interactions between top managers and the project teams.

The authors found that MEC uses formal control mechanisms such as a stage-gate model and a project management and reporting system to keep track of the progress of innovation projects. In addition, top managers use informal controls through involvement in innovation activities and interaction with the team members during the stages and gates of the development process. To carry out their control practices top managers use four distinct styles of control as follows: participative, facilitative, empowering and authoritative.

Suggestions are provided for managers on how formal and informal management control tools can be used in innovation processes. The authors show how top managers can broaden their range of interventions by involving themselves in product innovation projects in different ways.

This paper shows how the combination of formal and informal controls can generate a more holistic view of management control in innovation. It also adds to previous conceptualizations of control use by suggesting four distinct styles, which top managers can use to involve themselves in product innovation processes.

Drawing on activation theory, this paper aims to examine the process through which abusive supervision influences job-oriented constructive deviance (JCD) in the hospitality industry.

Data are collected from 198 employees working with 34 supervisors, at three time points across four hotel groups in Macau. The instantaneous indirect effect and moderated curvilinear effect using established measures are tested.

First, abusive supervision was positively associated with hotel employees’ job dissatisfaction and their job dissatisfaction had an inverted curvilinear effect on JCD. Second, job dissatisfaction nonlinearly mediated the impact of abusive supervision on JCD. Third, high problem-focused coping decelerated the diminishing benefits of job dissatisfaction on JCD.

First, organizations should accept employees’ constructive deviance but suppress managers’ abusive supervision. Second, organizations need to improve employees’ problem-focused coping skills and channel job dissatisfaction into constructive and active behaviors.

Theoretically, the authors test a nonlinearly mediating and moderated curvilinear model and address the research concern on whether, why and how service employees decide to engage in positive deviant behaviors when encountering abusive supervision. Practically, the authors avoid concluding that moderate levels of abusive supervision can promote positive employee behaviors and refrain from justification of abusive supervision in the hospitality context.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore the influence mechanism of corporate social responsibility (CSR) for smart cities on consumers' purchase intention. The authors aim to identify the key components of CSR for smart cities based on the perspective of consumers, namely responsibility toward consumers, environment and community and validate their relationship.

The authors exploit data collected by questionnaire surveys to estimate the effects of CSR for smart cities on consumers' purchase intentions and to investigate the statistical causality between them. The multilinear regression model is used to figure out the different impact levels of the three dimensions of CSR for smart cities on consumers' purchase intention.

The results illustrate that CSR for smart cities and its three dimensions all have significant positive impacts on consumers' purchase intentions. Besides, consumer–corporate identity (CCI) exerts a partial mediation effect on this influence mechanism.

This research is based on a rather small sample size. Besides, due to the time limitation and other factors, some other control variables are neglected in the regression model. Therefore, the impact level could be distorted.

The authors put forward management implications according to research conclusions. Corporates should actively fulfill the CSR in the field of consumer responsibility to boost consumers' purchase intention. Corporate should strengthen the interaction with consumers to improve their corporate identity.

The main contribution of this paper is to provide convincing evidence of the impacts of CSR for smart cities on consumer purchase intention (CPI), thus proposing effective measures for corporates to win more consumers by taking on social responsibility for smart cities. This paper takes CCI as mediating variable to deepen the understanding of the impacts of CSR for smart cities on CPI, which is innovative and beneficial to enriching literature in related fields.

When facing a clouded global economy, many countries would increase their gold reserves. On the other hand, oil supply and demand depends on the political and economic situations of oil producing countries and their production technologies. Both oil and gold reserve play important roles in the economic development of a country. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This paper uses the historical data of oil and gold prices as research data, and uses the historical price tendency charts of oil and gold, as well as cluster analysis, to discuss the correlation between the historical data of oil and gold prices. By referring to the technical index equation of stocks, the technical indices of oil and gold prices are calculated as the independent variable and the closing price as the dependent variable of the forecasting model.

The findings indicate that there is no obvious correlation between the price tendencies of oil and gold. According to five evaluating indicators, the MFOAGRNN forecast model has better forecast ability than the other three forecasting models.

This paper explored the correlation between oil and gold prices, and built oil and gold prices forecasting models. In addition, this paper proposes a modified FOA (MFOA), where an escape parameter Δ is added to Si. The findings showed that the forecasting model that combines MFOA and GRNN has the best ability to forecast the closing price of oil and gold.

Introduction: The world is passing through a technology explosion phase where one technology is being replaced by another very quickly. Emerging technologies play more important roles in the insurance sector directly or indirectly. These technologies have a high potential to change the insurance paradigm.

Purpose: In this chapter, we discuss emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, blockchain, the internet of things (IoT), mobile technology, predictive analytics, social media, telematics, chatbots, low codes, and drones in the context of the insurance industry.

Methodology: To carry out our analysis, we searched for data using the keywords for each technology from the Web of Science (WoS) coral database. Certain inclusion and exclusion criteria were followed to select the articles for further analysis. R-studio was used for the data analysis and visualisation.

Findings: It was found that the highest number of research articles published are related to big data, followed by AI and social media. The first article on AI in insurance appeared in 1975. Social media is the highest cited new technology, whereas the low codes are the undiscovered paradigm for the insurance sector with no published research. Research on the impact of chatbots, drones, and mobile technology in the insurance industry is still at a nascent stage. We also noticed that the United States is leading the research on emerging technologies in the insurance sector.

Implications: This chapter audits the emerging technologies in the insurance sector and identifies technological areas with the highest, least, or no research, dominant journals, authors, and countries. This holistic overview empowers managers and academicians to decide the future course of action.

Building upon social capital theoretical foundation, the principal purpose of present research is to construct a conceptual research model and uncover the intricate relationships between WeChat usage, social capital and civic participation behaviors among young people.

A large cross-sectional valid data from 1,238 young people in mainland China were gathered to examine the hypothesized research model. Descriptive analyses, correlation analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) were sequentially undertaken to determine dynamic interrelationships among main constructs.

The empirical findings demonstrate that WeChat usage positively impacts young people's social interaction ties, the guanxi network and shared goals. Moreover, social interaction ties and shared goals are positively associated with their online civic engagement. Furthermore, the guanxi network is positively associated with both online and offline civic engagement.

Theoretically, this research is the first to explicitly explore the influence mechanism of WeChat use intensity on different dimensions of individual-level social capital and civic engagement. Practically, these obtained results can be beneficial to the comprehending of whether and how WeChat is a resource for social capital and civic involvement.

Despite mobile social media, especially WeChat, has achieved immense popularity in contemporary mainland China, the potential influence of this emerging technology use on individuals' differential dimensions of social capital and civic engagement has not been systematically investigated. The study may not only offer fresh insight into innovative features of WeChat but also contribute to broader controversies regarding the impact of mobile-mediated communication on individuals' daily civic lives.

The aim of this paper is to adopt a study framework of network embeddedness and social capital perspective, and to explore the relationship among relationship strength, knowledge integration capability and the efficiency of knowledge transfer among technology alliance.

Empirical data were acquired through a recent survey of electrical and mechanical, biopharmaceutical and chemical industries. LISREL analysis was employed to examine the impact of relationship strength and integration capability on the efficiency of knowledge transfer.

The results verify that relationship strength has a significant positive impact on cooperative knowledge transfer and external integration capability, but it cannot influence innovative knowledge and internal integration capability. The internal knowledge integration capacity has a positive influence on the external integration capacity, but the external knowledge integration does not have significant impact on the internal integration capacity. Combined with the external integration capability, relationship strength's indirect influence on cooperative knowledge transfer is greater than the direct one.

Strengthening knowledge integration capacity is the key to improve the efficiency of knowledge transfer by taking advantage of partnerships. The enterprise should adjust the relationship strength according to the function matching of the knowledge.

This paper is one of very few that provide empirical evidence of the impact of relationship strength and integration capability on the performance of knowledge transfer. It provides necessary basis for the enterprise to lay out and establish the technology alliance, which the enterprise should adjust the type of union according to the characteristic of the knowledge during the process of planning the technology alliance. This paper also suggests that the enterprises should make full use of technology alliance to enhance the external integration ability.