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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon in China of listed companies propping up their reported earnings through the use of abnormal related‐party sales. It is hypothesised that two factors associated with securities regulation of listed companies in China will distort the market for ownership control and consequently impact on the practice of propping. The first factor is the firm's risk of being classified as a “special treatment” firm and potentially being delisted. The second factor is the proportion of non‐tradable shares retained by a State‐based controlling shareholder from a government allocation.

The hypotheses are modelled and tested using secondary data from 2010 annual reports and a financial database for companies sampled from the top 100 on the Shanghai and Shenzen Stock Exchanges.

Both hypotheses are supported. Abnormal sales (a proxy for propping) are found to be higher for firms whose ROE had fallen to a level that potentially put them under “special treatment” scrutiny, and also are higher for firms whose proportion of non‐tradeable shares had declined.

Prior studies on propping have focused on companies faced with moderate financial shock being propped up by controlling shareholders so as to preserve their future opportunities to tunnel funds away from minority shareholders. Not previously investigated are the potential side effects of securities regulations on controlling shareholders' incentive for propping, namely, the identification that propping relates to the level of ROE needed to avoid “special treatment” status and the proportion of non‐tradable shares needed as a buffer in the market for corporate control.

Multi-robot laser-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) in large-scale environments is an essential but challenging issue in mobile robotics, especially in situations wherein no prior knowledge is available between robots. Moreover, the cumulative errors of every individual robot exert a serious negative effect on loop detection and map fusion. To address these problems, this paper aims to propose an efficient approach that combines laser and vision measurements.

A multi-robot visual laser-SLAM is developed to realize robust and efficient SLAM in large-scale environments; both vision and laser loop detections are integrated to detect robust loops. A method based on oriented brief (ORB) feature detection and bag of words (BoW) is developed, to ensure the robustness and computational effectiveness of the multi-robot SLAM system. A robust and efficient graph fusion algorithm is proposed to merge pose graphs from different robots.

The proposed method can detect loops more quickly and accurately than the laser-only SLAM, and it can fuse the submaps of each single robot to promote the efficiency, accuracy and robustness of the system.

Compared with the state of art of multi-robot SLAM approaches, the paper proposed a novel and more sophisticated approach. The vision-based and laser-based loops are integrated to realize a robust loop detection. The ORB features and BoW technologies are further utilized to gain real-time performance. Finally, random sample consensus and least-square methodologies are used to remove the outlier loops among robots.

Port competition attracted much scholarly attention in Northwest Europe during the 1980s. Following the rise of powerful economies in East Asia, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s, port competition has become an important phenomenon with the top five container ports in the world being located in the region. This paper aims to overview major port competition issues and outlines and analyzes the main alternative methodologies that researchers have employed to address them, referring to 70 items, mostly papers but including a few books and reports

The information and communication technologies have made it progressively practical for employees to remain associated with work, even when they are not in the workplace. However, prior studies have provided very little understanding of the implications for the deviant behavior aspect. The current study aims to investigate the association between after-hours work-related technology usage and interpersonal, organizational and nonwork deviance through psychological transition, interruption overload and task closure. The authors draw upon the theory of conservation of resource (COR) to examine the research model.

The primary data for the study has been collected in two waves from the sample of 318 employees who were working in diverse organizations in the Anhui province of the People's Republic of China for empirical testing of the authors’ research model.

This study's findings have revealed the positive association of after-hour work-related technology use with individuals' deviance in its entire three forms through psychological transition and interruption overload and have negative associations with all forms of deviance through task closure.

The significant contribution of this study is in the literature on technology use and employee outcomes, by identifying the consequences of technology use in both work (interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance) and outside work domain (nonwork deviance) and exploring the underlying mechanisms for these relationships in detail. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind that investigates a relationship between after-hours technology use and all three kinds of deviance while exploring both the positive and negative perspectives in one study.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of after-hours work-related technology use on interpersonal, organizational and nonwork deviance through work–family conflict (WFC) by focusing on the moderating role of other- and self-initiated interruptions.

The online survey included 318 valid samples from employees working in different organizations in the Anhui provinces of the People's Republic of China. The authors applied Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) process macros for testing mediation and moderated mediation analysis while conducting path analytic procedures and bootstrapping analysis.

This study found that after-hours work-related technology use is positively associated with interpersonal, organizational and nonwork deviance through WFC. This positive relationship strengthens in the presence of other-initiated interruptions compared with self-initiated interruptions. The results show that as compared to self-initiated interruptions, other-initiated interruptions strengthen the relationship between after-hours work-related technology use and its outcomes in the forms of WFC and deviance.

After-hours work-related technology use is a ubiquitous phenomenon and got significant scholarly attention. However, its effect on WFC and individual deviant behaviors has never been studied. Moreover, the moderated-mediation role of self-initiated and other-initiated interruptions presents a unique and important development in the context of after-hours work-related technology use and deviant behavior.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of knowledge management (KM) practices on innovation performance. It also examines whether organisational creativity and organizational learning mediate the relationship between KM practices and innovation performance.

The study uses a quantitative method by surveying (n = 291) hotel employees from Malaysia using self-administered questionnaires. Data collected were analysed by using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Findings reveal that KM positively impacts innovation performance among Malaysian hospitality workers. This study further reveals that organisational learning and organisational creativity significantly mediate the relationship between KM and innovation performance.

Theoretically, this study establishes how KM practices influence innovation performance. Organizations that practice organizational learning and creativity are more likely to benefit from increased innovation outcomes through KM practices.

This paper aims to generate novel insights in supply chain management by reviewing studies related to counterfeiting and piracy issues with a particular emphasis on theoretical works.

A systematic literature review of more than 100 peer-reviewed academic papers is conducted. The authors first introduce the social acceptance of counterfeiting and piracy to explain the existence of these illegal products. After that, they focus on the negative effect of counterfeiting and piracy on supply chain management and society while mentioning their positive and normative effects carefully under certain circumstances.

People have been attempting to reveal the impacts of counterfeiting and piracy on customers, licit firms, industry sectors, governments and the society as a whole. The negative impacts of counterfeiting and piracy on legal firms and licit supply chains is examined thoroughly in the literature; however, benefits from counterfeiting and piracy are also pointed out. Additionally, researchers are interested in firms’ reactions toward this phenomenon. Based on heuristics from the above analysis, it is fruitful to conduct this research in a theme of supply chain management.

Most studies on counterfeiting and piracy are not from a supply chain management perspective and mainly focus on their effect on consumers or a single firm. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of few studies that incorporate the key aspects of counterfeiting and piracy into supply chain management and also highlight several important directions for future research in the sense of supply chain.

The purpose of the paper is to identify the main determinants of the development of the neighbourhood electric vehicle (NEV) industry in China, including influences from private stakeholders as well as the government, and domestic as well as foreign interest groups. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) and the relations between the government and the SOE sector.

The paper follows an inductive approach, and is largely based on interviews with industry actors and representatives for relevant government agencies, complemented with secondary data.

The preliminary findings suggest that unlike Western market economies, where the impact of public policy on innovation is relatively transparent and well recorded (in the form of fiscal and financial incentives and formal legislation), much of Chinese innovation is driven by less formal decisions taken in the nexus between SOEs and relevant state agencies. Hence, although China suffers no lack of legislation at various levels (including laws, decrees, and guidelines) it is often difficult to identify the specific drivers for change.

The findings are useful for understanding the development of the NEV industry in China.

The current paper is the first application of the GIST (Governance of Innovation towards Sustainability Technology) framework to the case of the Chinese NEV industry.

This paper looks at one relatively less‐visited issue in market timing: switching investments on common stocks between different stock markets, namely, “intermarket timing”. By employing the stock price data for the period of 1992‐2002 from a developed market, Hong Kong, and two emerging markets, Shanghai and Shenzhen, this paper examines potential gains and the required predictive accuracy for intermarket timing between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and between Hong Kong and Shenzhen from Hong Kong investors’ perspective. Potential gains could be obtained from such timing strategy, and the non‐high minimum forecasting ability required for successful timing is fairly attainable for Hong Kong investors, even after taking into account the assumed transaction costs.