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Private firms in China are like the third child in a family, constantly struggling to establish their position in an environment favoring their state-owned and collective siblings. The purpose of this paper is to discover some long-term-oriented legitimacy building strategies for private firms in China.

This paper examines the effect of both internal and external institutional factors on long-term legitimacy for private enterprises. The authors integrate stakeholder perspective and institutional theory to provide a framework of building sustainable legitimacy.

The authors’ framework delineates that a private company can build sustainable legitimacy through catering long-term legitimacy conferring to constituents such as customers, social responsibility and patriotism in the external institutional environment.

The authors’ framework further indicates how private firms could leverage internal institutional environment through developing appropriate mission, culture, leadership and human resources practices in conformity to the demands of constituents for gaining long-term legitimacy.

This paper is the first to address the short-term nature of legitimacy building strategies proposed in the past literature. In addition, it is also the first attempt to explore the multiplicity in legitimacy in China in search of long-term legitimacy building approaches.

There is no previous systematic and theoretical investigation of the interim CEO succession practice. This research attempts to fill the gap by studying this phenomenon and hence advance executive succession research/practice.

Based on agency theory, the authors propose a model and several propositions to predict what determines the origin of interim CEOs, the length of the interim tenure, and the career prospects for the interim CEO after the interim tenure.

Both firm performance and environmental uncertainty play an important role in the dynamic interim CEO succession process.

The paper provides the foundations for future empirical research on interim CEO succession.

Board members at companies experiencing sudden CEO departures should choose a loyal non‐aggressive veteran to be the interim CEO so as to minimize disruption and to smooth the transition. They should use caution when choosing an internal candidate because if such a candidate is not chosen to be the permanent CEO later, a talent may be lost.

The research is the first to systematically examine the phenomenon of interim CEOs. The authors make a unique contribution to the literature on CEO succession.

This paper aims to deal with the problems such as epistemic uncertainty, common cause failure (CCF) and dynamic fault behaviours that arise in complex systems and develop an effective fault diagnosis method to rapidly locate the fault when these systems fail.

First, a dynamic fault tree model is established to capture the dynamic failure behaviours and linguistic term sets are used to obtain the failure rate of components in complex systems to deal with the epistemic uncertainty. Second, a β factor model is used to construct a dynamic evidence network model to handle CCF and some parameters obtained by reliability analysis are used to build the fault diagnosis decision table. Finally, an improved Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje algorithm is developed to obtain the optimal diagnosis sequence, which can locate the fault quickly, reduce the maintenance cost and improve the diagnosis efficiency.

In this paper, a new optimal fault diagnosis strategy of complex systems considering CCF under epistemic uncertainty is presented based on reliability analysis. Dynamic evidence network is easy to carry out the quantitative analysis of dynamic fault tree. The proposed diagnosis algorithm can determine the optimal fault diagnosis sequence of complex systems and prove that CCF should not be ignored in fault diagnosis.

The proposed method combines the reliability theory with multiple attribute decision-making methods to improve the diagnosis efficiency.

The purpose of this paper is to optimize a new thin-walled cellular configurations with crashworthiness criteria, so as to improve the crashworthiness of components of a vehicle body.

ANSYS Parametric Design Language is used to create the parameterized models so that the design variables can be changed conveniently. Moreover, the surrogate technique, namely response surface method, is adopted for fitting objective and constraint functions. The factorial design and D-optimal criterion are employed to screen active parameters for constructing the response functions of the specific energy absorption and the peak crushing force. Finally, sequential quadratic programming-NLPQL is utilized to solve the design optimization problem of the new cellular configurations filled with multi-cell circular tubes under the axial crushing loading.

Two kinds of distribution modes of the cellular configurations are first investigated, which are in an orthogonal way and in a diamond fashion. After comparing the optimized configurations of the rectangular distribution with the annular distribution of the multi-cell fillers, it is found that the orthogonal way seems better in the aspects of crashworthiness than the diamond fashion.

The two new thin-walled cellular configuration are studied and optimized with the crashworthiness criteria. Study on the new cellular configurations is very valuable for improving the crashworthiness of components of a vehicle body. Meanwhile, the factorial design and the factor screening are adopted in the process of the crashworthiness optimization of the new thin-walled cellular configurations.

An increasing number of Chinese enterprises are involved in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). However, few Chinese enterprises have achieved successful integration, which plays a critical role in enhancing performance. The important field of cultural integration is currently facing major challenges. To identify the reasons for these challenges, studies have analyzed why cultural integration succeeds or fails and have suggested that cultural differences between acquiring and acquired enterprises are the primary obstacles to cultural integration. However, it is unclear how success can be achieved. The paper aims to focus on cultural integration from the perspective of acculturation to describe the penetration of cultural elements in M&As.

In adopting acculturation as our theoretical lens, the authors use the case study method to answer the following research question: “how can the cultural integration of Chinese enterprises be successfully achieved?” Two typical cases are examined: Lenovo’s cultural integration with IBM’s personal computer (PC) division and Haier’s cultural integration with Sanyo home appliance. First, using the exploratory case study method, the Lenovo–IBM PC division case is analyzed. The characteristics and relationships between cultural environments, employee adoption methods and acculturation patterns are summarized to reveal a cultural integration path. Second, the Haier–Sanyo home appliance case is analyzed using the confirmative case study method to test the findings of the Lenovo–IBM PC division case.

The results indicate that it is critical to achieve a dynamic fit between cultural environments, employee adoption methods and acculturation patterns during each stage of cultural integration (exploration, experimentation, reinforcement and fixing). The three constructs of these stages reflect the following evolutionary paths: “isolate-introduce-learning-chance taking”, “detecting-icebreaking-interacting-remodeling” and “specialized sections-senior managers-managers-employees”.

These findings contribute to the development of cultural integration and acculturation theories and serve as a reference for Chinese enterprises wishing to implement cultural integration strategies.

The application of thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) allows aero-engine blades to operate at higher temperatures with higher efficiency. The preparation of the TBCs increases the surface roughness of the blade, which impacts the thermal cycle life and thermal insulation performance of the coating. To reduce the surface roughness of blades, particularly the blades with small size and complex curvature, this paper aims to propose a method for industrial robot polishing trajectory planning based on on-site measuring point cloud.

The authors propose an integrated robotic polishing trajectory planning method using point cloud processing technical. At first, the acquired point cloud is preprocessed, which includes filtering and plane segmentation algorithm, to extract the blade body point cloud. Then, the point cloud slicing algorithm and the intersection method are used to create a preliminary contact point set. Finally, the Douglas–Peucker algorithm and pose frame estimation are applied to extract the tool-tip positions and optimize the tool contact posture, respectively. The resultant trajectory is evaluated by simulation and experiment implementation.

The target points of trajectory are not evenly distributed on the blade surface but rather fluctuate with surface curvature. The simulated linear and orientation speeds of the robot end could be relatively steady over 98% of the total time within 20% reduction of the rest time. After polishing experiments, the coating roughness on the blade surface is reduced dramatically from Ra 7–8 µm to below Ra 1.0 µm. The removal of the TBCs is less than 100 mg, which is significantly less than the weight of the prepared coatings. The blade surface becomes smoothed to a mirror-like state.

The research on robotic polishing of aero-engine turbine blade TBCs is worthwhile. The real-time trajectory planning based on measuring point cloud can address the problem that there is no standard computer-aided drawing model and the geometry and size of the workpiece to be processed differ. The extraction and optimization of tool contact points based on point cloud features can enhance the smoothness of the robot movement, stability of the polishing speed and performance of the blade surface after polishing.

During the process of the robotic grinding and polishing operations on aero-engine blades, the key problem of calibration error lies in fixture error and uneven margin. To solve this problem, this paper aims to propose a novel method to achieve rapid online calibration of the workpiece coordinate system through laser-based measurement techniques.

The authors propose a calibration strategy based on point cloud registration algorithm. The main principle is presented as follows: aero blade mounted on clamping end-effector is hold by industry robot, the whole device is then scanned by a 3D laser scanner to obtain its surface point cloud, and a fast segmentation method is used to acquire the point cloud of the workpiece. Combining Super4PCS algorithm with trimmed iterative closest point, we can align the key points of the scanned point cloud and the sampled points of the blade model, thus obtaining the translation and rotation matrix for calculating the workpiece coordinate and machining allowance. The proposed calibration strategy is experimentally validated, and the positioning error, as well as the margin distribution, is finally analyzed.

The experimental results show that the algorithm can well accomplish the task of cross-source, partial data and similar local features of blade point cloud registration with high precision. The total time spent on point cloud alignment of 100,000 order of magnitude blade is about 4.2 s, and meanwhile, the average point cloud alignment error is reduced to below 0.05 mm.

An improved point cloud registration method is proposed and introduced into the calibration process of a robotic system. The online calibration technique improves the accuracy and efficiency of the calibration process and enhances the automation of the robotic grinding and polishing system.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of parameters on the liquid phase migration (LPM) during the freeze-form extrusion fabrication (FEF) process.

To carry out this study, three factors were systematically investigated using orthogonal design of experiments. These three parameters are the extrusion velocity, the extrusion interval time and the extrusion head length. An orthogonal array with nine test units was selected for the experiments. Range analysis and analysis of variance were used to analyze the data obtained by the orthogonal experiments to identify the order of significant factors on LPM.

It was found that the LPM decreased with the increase of extrusion velocity and increased with the lengthening of extrusion interval time and the length of the extrusion nozzle. The order of significant factors for the LPM were found to be extrusion velocity > extrusion nozzle length > extrusion interval time.

Using an orthogonal design of experiments and a statistical analysis method, the liquid content of extrudate can be predicted and appropriate process parameter values can be selected. This leads to the minimization of LPM during the FEF process. Also, this analysis method could be used to study the LPM in other paste extrusion processes.

This paper suggests that the factors have significant impact on LPM during FEF process. The following analysis in this paper is useful for FEF users when prediction of LPM is needed. This methodology could be easily applied to different materials and initial conditions for optimization of other FEF-type processes. The research can also help to get better understanding of LPM during the FEF process.

This paper aims to deal with the problems of failure dependence and common cause failure (CCF) that arise in reliability analysis of complex systems.

Firstly, a dynamic fault tree (DFT) is used to capture the dynamic failure behaviours and converted into an equivalent generalized stochastic petri net (GSPN) for quantitative analysis. Secondly, an efficient decomposition and aggregation (EDA) theory is combined with GSPN to deal with the CCF problem, which exists in redundant systems. Finally, Birnbaum importance measure (BIM) is calculated based on the EDA approach and GSPN model, and it is used to take decisions for system improvement and fault diagnosis.

In this paper, a new reliability evaluation method for dynamic systems subject to CCF is presented based on the DFT analysis and the GSPN model. The GSPN model is easy to capture dynamic failure behaviours of complex systems, and the movement of tokens in the GSPN model represent the changes in the state of the systems. The proposed method takes advantage of the GSPN model and incorporates the EDA method into the GSPN, which simplifies the reliability analysis process. Meanwhile, simulation results under different conditions show that CCF has made a considerable impact on reliability analysis for complex systems, which indicates that the CCF should not be ignored in reliability analysis.

The proposed method combines the EDA theory with the GSPN model to improve the efficiency of the reliability analysis.