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Drawing on institutional theory, this study seeks to advance the understanding of how the indirect effect of exporters' adoption of an international adaptation strategy on export performance via enhanced legitimacy is differently moderated by formal and informal institutional distances from the host country market.

Survey data were collected from a sample of 251 exporters in China and analyzed with a multiple regression model to test the hypotheses.

Exporters' use of an international adaptation strategy affects their perceived legitimacy, which in turn influences their export performance. Moreover, formal institutional distance strengthens the indirect effect of an international adaptation strategy on export performance via legitimacy, whereas informal institutional distance weakens this indirect effect.

The study contributes to the knowledge of how and when adoption of an international adaptation strategy by exporters benefits export performance from an institutional perspective.

This paper aims to design a vision-based non-contact real-time accurate heart rate (HR) measurement framework for home nursing assistant.

The study applied Second-Order Blind Signal Identification (SOBI) algorithm to extract remote HR signal and analyzed it with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Multiple regions of interest are chosen and analyzed to obtain a more accurate result.

An accurate non-contact hear rate (HR) measurement framework is proposed and proved to be efficient.

The contributions of this HR measurement framework are as follows: accurate measurement of HR, real-time performance, robust under various scenes such as conversation, lightweight computation which is suitable and necessary for home nursing assistance. This framework is designed to be flexibly used in various real-life scenes such as domestic health assistance and affectively intelligent agents and is proved to be robust under such scenes.

Given the recent rapid economic development, the processes of industrialization and urbanization are accelerating. At the same time, the contradiction between environmental quality and economic development has become increasingly prominent and is likely to restrict the normal pace of China’s economic development and environmental protection. As such, the purpose of this paper is to incorporate the urbanization factor into an analytic framework to discuss the relationship among urbanization, economic development, and environmental pollution.

A panel data of 31 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2015 is selected for this research. A spatial correlation test is first conducted on the environmental pollution status, then the spatial Durbin model is used to carry out spatial econometric testing of the relationship among the above three factors.

Interprovincial environmental pollution in China has significant positive spatial correlation, environmental pollution discharge in most provinces is significantly stable, discharge of environmental pollutants is transitioning from coastal to inland provinces, and urbanization and economic growth can both aggravate environmental pollution, but economic growth can relieve environmental pollution in neighboring provinces.

The relationship between economic growth, urbanization, and environmental quality has always been an important issue for sustainable development. As such, China’s urbanization leads to economic development, while rapid economic growth and environmental pollution are coordinated. This paper focuses on the specific relationship between them. To this end, local governments make concerted efforts to formulate sound environmental regulation policies based on local environmental conditions, where economic development is an effective means of alleviating the contradictory relationship between economic development and environmental protection.

Based on the team conflict theory and organizational learning theory, this study aims to discuss the two different types of conflicts of the top management team (TMT) on the different mechanisms of exploratory learning behavior of firms, and, based on the perspective of CEO-TMT (CEO – chief executive officer) interface, the different moderating effects caused by different CEO leadership styles are clarified.

Using the sample of 193 firms’ samples with multi-source data, the authors take an empirical test of the theoretical framework.

The effect of task conflict on exploratory learning behavior was insignificant, and relationship conflict had a positive effect on exploratory learning behavior. However, when CEO’s transformational leadership level was high, or transactional leadership level was low, there existed “bathtub curve” relationship between task conflict and exploratory learning behavior, and the relationship conflict under these conditions strengthened exploratory learning behavior. When CEO’s transactional leadership level was high, or transformational leadership level was low, there existed the inverted U-shaped relationship between task conflict and exploratory learning behavior, and the relationship conflict under such conditions weakened exploratory learning behavior.

First, the authors challenge the assumption of linear mechanism of task conflict, trying to build the mechanism of curve hypothesis, and the nonlinear explanation might be able to integrate the inconsistent results in the existing literature. Second, according to the inconsistent results of relationship conflict in existing literature, this study takes perspective of the CEO-TMT and introduces CEO leadership behavior as a moderating variable to test the moderating effect of CEO leadership and clarifies the boundary conditions of TMT conflicts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine factors affecting fundraisers’ voluntary information disclosure on crowdfunding platforms based on risk-perception theory (RPT).

Structural equation modeling was employed to test the hypothesized relationships using data collected from China.

The authors found that plagiarism risk and financing risk are two important variables that influence fundraisers’ voluntary information disclosure. Specifically, plagiarism risk has a negative effect on fundraisers’ voluntary information disclosure, while financing risk has a positive effect on fundraisers’ voluntary information disclosure. Plagiarism risk is affected by information concerns, perceived control, project innovativeness, and quality of alternatives, while financing risk is affected by protection policy and information norms.

This study enriches crowdfunding research by identifying factors influencing fundraisers’ voluntary information disclosure and contributes to RPT by applying it in a new crowdfunding context.

This paper aims to develop a robust person tracking method for human following robots. The tracking system adopts the multimodal fusion results of millimeter wave (MMW) radars and monocular cameras for perception. A prototype of human following robot is developed and evaluated by using the proposed tracking system.

Limited by angular resolution, point clouds from MMW radars are too sparse to form features for human detection. Monocular cameras can provide semantic information for objects in view, but cannot provide spatial locations. Considering the complementarity of the two sensors, a sensor fusion algorithm based on multimodal data combination is proposed to identify and localize the target person under challenging conditions. In addition, a closed-loop controller is designed for the robot to follow the target person with expected distance.

A series of experiments under different circumstances are carried out to validate the fusion-based tracking method. Experimental results show that the average tracking errors are around 0.1 m. It is also found that the robot can handle different situations and overcome short-term interference, continually track and follow the target person.

This paper proposed a robust tracking system with the fusion of MMW radars and cameras. Interference such as occlusion and overlapping are well handled with the help of the velocity information from the radars. Compared to other state-of-the-art plans, the sensor fusion method is cost-effective and requires no additional tags with people. Its stable performance shows good application prospects in human following robots.

By modeling and analyzing the two-phase mechanical seal of the fan-shaped groove end face, which is prone to phase change, an effective method to study the flow field of the mechanical seal when both cavitation and boiling exist simultaneously is found.

Based on the finite volume method, a fluid model was developed to investigate a two-phase mechanical seal. The validity of the proposed model was verified by comparing with some classical models.

By modeling and analyzing the two-phase mechanical seal of the fan-shaped groove end face, which is prone to phase change, the analysis of the gap flow field of the mechanical seal was realized when cavitation and boiling existed simultaneously.

Based on the model proposed for different conditions, the pressure and phase states in the shallow groove sealing gap were compared. The phase change rate between the mechanical seal faces was also investigated.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-12-2019-0537/

This paper aims to investigate how perceived working conditions affect employee performance, including safety compliance and task performance, through employee well-being (i.e. job satisfaction) in the context of the coal mining sector in China.

This paper uses the job demands-resources model to test the relationships between working conditions, including job demands (work pressure as a challenge demand and perceived risks and hazards in the workplace and ineffectiveness of the safety system as hindrance demands), job resources (interpersonal harmony), job satisfaction and performance. This study adopts a two-wave design with a three-month lag to reduce possible common method bias.

Employees who experienced high level of challenge demands, e.g. time pressure workload, reported higher levels of task performance, and this positive relationship seemed to be robust. There is a direct effect of perceived ineffectiveness of the safety system on task performance, while the relationship between perceived risks and hazards and task performance was fully mediated by job satisfaction. Challenge demands, i.e. work pressure, did not impact much on employees’ well-being, and thus job satisfaction did not mediate the relationship between work pressure and performance. Perceived ineffectiveness of the safety system was negatively associated with safety compliance. This result is not surprising since a lack of effective safety system reflects management’s ignorance of workplace safety, which demotivates employees to enact safe behaviors. In contrast, the presence and implementation of an effective safety system would be interpreted by employees as management exhibiting a high level of commitment. Work pressure was positively not negatively related to safety compliance. One possible explanation for this finding is that the effects of work pressure on safety compliance behaviors might be dependent on contextual factors such as safety climate. Interpersonal harmony moderated the relationships between work pressure and employee performance (both safety compliance and task performance) and the relationship between perceived risks and hazards and task performance, but the role of interpersonal harmony appeared more complex. There was no significant correlation between challenging job demands and individual employee performance when there were higher levels of interpersonal harmony. The relationship between perceived risks and hazards, a hindrance job demand and task performance became positive as interpersonal harmony increased but negative as interpersonal harmony decreased.

This paper provides a robust integrative theoretical framework that better explains the various types of job demands and job resources in the working environment of coal mining sector in China and their relationships to employee performance. The findings also offer valuable guidance for managers trying to identify effective ways to enhance employee performance and safety in the workplace.

This study aims to test the possible correlation between the letter height-to-width ratio and consumers’ perception of cuteness.

Through the design of three groups of experimental questionnaires, this paper carried out experiments on subjects with different professional backgrounds.

The result shows that perceived cuteness is only beneficial for consumers who adopt communal relationship (rather than exchange relationship) with the brand. Compared to consumers who adopt communal relationship with brands, letters of lower height-to-width ratio are perceived as cuter and thus more preferable than thinner ones, whereas for consumers who adopt exchange relationship with brands, thinner letters are preferred.

To rule out interference, this study focuses only on the height-to-width ratio of the letters. In the future, researchers can pay more attention to the mobility of brand relationships, consumers’ reading strategy and logos’ visual elements that influence consumers’ brand perception (besides height-to-width ratio).

The research reminds scholars that the height-to-width ratio of letters/logos is not only of aesthetic value but also imposes a great impact on consumer perception. And the result of this research explains the contradiction in consumers’ preference for wide vs thin letter shapes and provides evidence for the interaction between brand relationship norms and letter preferences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to explore the influence of letter height-to-width ratio in marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of board human capital diversity on corporate innovation. Moreover, it examines the moderating effect of internal social capital on the relationship between board human capital diversity and corporate innovation.

The hypotheses are tested using a data set on Standard & Poor’s 1500 firms from 2000 to 2015. To overcome omit variable bias and reverse causality, this paper uses change-on-change regression by exploring the exogenous shock of the death of the directors.

Findings show that board industry diversity has a curvilinear relationship with corporate innovation. In addition, the board co-tenure experience, a key factor of internal social capital, can mitigate the risk of board industry diversity and improve corporate innovation.

Prior studies mostly considered the demographic dimension of diversity and, therefore, have overlooked how other dimensions influence firms. This paper considers the human capital dimension of board diversity and investigates the effect of board industry diversity on the firm’s innovation outcome. In addition, this paper also addresses the question of whether the interaction of different director attributes, namely, board human capital and board internal social capital, can complement each other to enhance corporate innovation.