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Prior research on interfirm collaborations has demonstrated that trust and contract are two central governance mechanisms that influence a firm’s knowledge sharing decision and the subsequent effect on performance. However, we know little about how effective these mechanisms are in different market conditions and levels of organizational innovativeness. This study aims to advance the literature on interfirm knowledge sharing by exploring these contingencies and by providing an alternative explanation of the contradictory effects of knowledge sharing on firm performance.

The authors collected 156 firms’ relationships with their suppliers in two batches from 300 firms in the 2017 list of Statistics in the Zhejiang province in China. The authors used unstructured interviews and formal questionnaires to collect data from these firms.

Market turbulence served as a boundary condition for the effect of interfirm trust and formal contracts on knowledge sharing. Both interfirm trust and formal contracts, as governance mechanisms, are effective in raising interfirm knowledge sharing only when the firms operate in high turbulent markets. On the contrary, knowledge sharing negatively affected firm performance when firms exhibit low organizational innovativeness. Moreover, a three-way interaction among market turbulence, organizational innovativeness and knowledge sharing revealed that when market turbulence and organizational innovativeness were both low, interfirm knowledge sharing was detrimental to firm performance.

Based on the results, this study recommends managers consider external (market turbulence) and internal (organizational innovativeness) when firms decide to share knowledge and benefit from such activities.

This study extends prior research on the determinant of knowledge sharing and clarifies the inconsistent findings of knowledge sharing on firm performance. Thus, strategic organizational leaders need to pay attention to when they need to share information with suppliers to best benefit from those collaborations.

This study aims to investigate the mediating role of shopping intention and the moderating roles of employee incompetence and consumer similarity in the relationship between consumers’ personal traits and their shoplifting behaviors

Drawing on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the authors develop and test a model that links personality traits to shoplifting intention and behavior. The results from a sample of 507 consumers.

The results from a sample of 507 consumers show that shoplifting intention mediates the effects of personality traits (materialism, alienation and sensation seeking) on shoplifting behavior. In addition, both employee incompetence and consumer similarity are found to moderate the relationship between shoplifting intention and behavior. The findings offer some useful theoretical and managerial implications.

Drawing on the TPB, the authors investigate how personality traits (i.e. materialism, sensation seeking and consumer alienation) influence shoplifting behavior via shoplifting intention. They find that the effects of materialism, sensation seeking and alienation on shoplifting behavior are mediated by shoplifting intention. More importantly, they also find strong support for the moderating roles of employee incompetence and consumer similarity on the relationship between shoplifting intention and behavior. While employee incompetence enhances the relationship between shoplifting intention and shoplifting behavior, consumer similarity negatively moderates the relationship between shoplifting intention and shoplifting behavior.

This paper compares the characteristics of reverse logistics in the publishing industry among China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

A multiple‐case approach in combination with EIQ (entry of order, items, and quantity) analysis is selected to allow analytical generalization of the findings.

The research findings show that the reverse logistics of Chinese publications is still in early stage and is not mature enough to be interconnected in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The reverse logistics cost in these areas is unlikely to be significantly reduced in the near future.

Instead of making effort to process returned goods, logistics firms or publishers may consider discarding the returned goods directly. The loss on material cost is far less than the manpower spent on processing. Also, publishers can sort returned goods in off‐peak season to save cost on reverse logistics.

This research provides the first empirical study by applying EIQ analysis to understand the challenges of reverse logistics in the publishing industry in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which has been rarely discussed in the past.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the assumptive concept of internationalization because it is discussed and understood in the international business (IB) literature. This paper develops a framework to reconceptualize internationalization in the context of global value chain (GVC) and sustainability. Based on this conceptual framework, this paper aims to formulate interrelated propositions to define internationalization.

This paper reviews the assumptive conceptualization process based on empirical evidence obtained through qualitative, illustrative and descriptive content analysis methods. Through the collection and qualitative content analysis of milestone papers, this paper demonstrates the fragmentation of the concept of internationalization. This paper reviews the evolving nature of the concept of internationalization, analyzing the accumulative issues associated with defining internationalization, as well as its potential future development.

This paper introduces a dynamic perspective on the evolving nature of the concept of internationalization and argue there is a need to reconceptualize internationalization in the context of the GVC and sustainability.

After reviewing the context in which the term “internationalization” has been applied and taking into consideration the current trends in the IB, this paper formulates an updated definition of the term internationalization. This paper offers a viewpoint on the future direction of the concept of internationalization in light of the growing importance of sustainability within IB.

This paper proposes a hybrid biogeography‐based optimization (BBO) with simplex method (SM) algorithm (HSMBBO).

BBO is a new intelligent optimization algorithm. The global optimization ability of BBO is better than that of genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), but BBO also easily falls into local minimum. To improve BBO, HSMBBO combines BBO and SM, which makes full use of the high local search ability of SM. In HSMBBO, BBO is used firstly to obtain the current global solution. Then SM is searched to acquire the optimum solution based on that global solution. Due to the searching of SM, the search range is expanded and the speed of convergence is faster. Meanwhile, HSMBBO is applied to motion estimation of video coding.

In total, six benchmark functions with multimodal and high dimension are tested. Simulation results show that HSMBBO outperforms GA, PSO and BBO in converging speed and global search ability. Meanwhile, the application results show that HSMBBO performs better than GA, PSO and BBO in terms of both searching precision and time‐consumption.

The proposed algorithm improves the BBO algorithm and provides a new approach for motion estimation of video coding.

The purpose of this paper is to develop non-leaching and eco-friendly antimicrobial waterborne polyacrylates with excellent antibacterial properties by grafting antibacterial vinyl monomer, glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) modified polyhexamethylene guanidine hydrochloride (PHMG).

PHMG of different molecular weights were modified by GMA to synthesize antibacterial vinyl monomer, GMA-modified PHMG (GPHMG). Different content and molecular weights of GPHMG were used to synthesize antimicrobial waterborne polyacrylates through emulsion polymerization.

The addition of GPHMG gained by modifying PHMG showed little influence on thermal stability of the films, but decreased the glass transition temperature(Tg). Meanwhile, the tensile strength decreased, while the breaking elongation increased. The antibacterial properties of the antibacterial films with different GPHMG contents were studied, when GPHMG content was around 0.9 Wt.%, antibacterial films showed excellent antibacterial activity (antibacterial rate >= 99.99 per cent). When weight content of GPHMG in the films remained constant, antibacterial property of films increased first and then decreased with the increase of molecular weight of GPHMG. The structural antibacterial polymer film had more perdurable antibacterial activity than the blended one.

The grafting efficiency of GPHMG to antimicrobial waterborne polyacrylates could be further improved.

Antimicrobial waterborne polyacrylates with excellent antibacterial properties can be used to antibacterial coating and adhesive.

The antibacterial properties of films with different molecular weight of GPHMG were studied, and the durability and stability of antibacterial properties between structural antimicrobial films and blended antimicrobial films were also investigated by ring-diffusion method.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the interrelationships between innovation climate and human capital in the development of dynamic capabilities related to innovation. The study presents a set of concepts about variables involved in the innovation process and their interrelationship, addressing the analysis of international scientific production related to the antecedents of the innovation climate, human capital and dynamic capabilities.

A review of the literature from 1998 to 2018 was carried out, using descriptive statistical methods, at first, and qualitative analysis of the results in order to visualize the current configuration of the field of study of innovation background.

The results demonstrate a significant number of studies relating human capital and dynamic capabilities and little quantitative significance in studies relating to a climate of innovation and dynamic capabilities. The research describes how the dynamic capabilities of innovation have been approached in a conceptual model based on the perspective of human capital and innovation climate.

The study did not contemplate the analysis of the interrelationship between the resource configuration construct and the dynamic innovation capacities (part of the gap pointed out by Tuzovic, Wirtz and Heracleous (2018), constituting a perceptible limitation of the analyzes carried out in this article.

The influence of the innovation climate construct and its relationship with dynamic innovation capabilities deserves greater attention in research with an empirical approach, constituting a field to be explored by scientific research in organizations.

The research sought to investigate the gap involving the interrelations between innovation climate and human capital in the development of dynamic capabilities related to innovation, indicating the need for further empirical studies on the subject.

This paper aims to explore the quantile-specific short- and long-term effects of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the efficiency of the green bond market.

This study examines the long-term cointegration relationship and the short-term fluctuation relationship of EPU, WTI crude oil price (WTI) and European Union Allowances price (EUA) with the green bond market efficiency (GBE) using the quantile autoregressive distributed lag method. Additionally, the authors analyze the differences before and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

EPU has a significant positive impact on the GBE before the outbreak. However, during the crisis period, the impact of EPU and WTI was greatly weakened, whereas the impact of EUA was strengthened.

This paper demonstrates the dynamics of GBE and its influencing factors under different periods. The findings provide insights for market participants and policymakers to gain a clearer understanding of the green bond market.

This paper extends the study of green bonds by quantifying the GBE and elucidating the nonlinear relationship between efficiency and independent variables at different quantiles over different periods.

In electronics assembly, the losses of electronic components throughout the surface‐mounting process (including kitting and setup) are hard to trace. This affects accurate material planning and manufacturing costing. This paper aims to investigate this issue and to generate a suitable mixture of strategies for the relevant causes.

The project is executed by an undergraduate manufacturing engineering student and several company engineers over a period of ten weeks. Define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) approach delineates the project stages. The solutions devised must be in agreement with lean philosophies and practices currently upheld in the company.

Component losses stem from multiple sources and are complicated by inherent information inaccuracies. A right mixture of strategies is envisaged on analysis on these sources. An average 18 percent of decrement in component losses in monetary value is achieved in the initial 16 weeks of the improvement phase.

The DMAIC approach induces a focused, systematic and thorough study on the selected area. For the limitations, this study is based on a single industrial case. The evidence may be anecdotal and idiosyncratic to the electronics assembly industry. The final solutions which emerged need to factor in the organization current maturities in Lean and Six Sigma concepts.

Component loss is a common problem faced by electronics assembly industries. In this paper, the nature of the problem and the related investigation are extensively illustrated in the context of the case study. As many electronics assembly industries have embarked on Lean or Lean Six Sigma journeys, the savings and data accuracy improvement achieved in this case study provide valuable benchmarks.

The issues related to electronic component losses have not been reported in established literature to date. This is also the first reported success case study of applying DMAIC to address these issues in a lean company.

Several studies have proposed that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lack resources and experiential knowledge to internationalise to distant markets. The authors argue that SMEs can handle the lack of these tangible and intangible internal resources through external collaborations; they can achieve success in international markets by collaborating with business partners. The role of inter-firm marketing collaboration and its impact on internationalisation efforts has not been thoroughly studied, particularly in the context of SMEs. This study will thus advance our understanding of SMEs’ inter-firm marketing collaborations and how they influence performance in international markets. In this chapter, authors conceptually develop this line of arguments through an extensive literature review and develop some hypotheses and a framework that can be empirically tested. The authors believe this framework will serve as a starting point for further studies on this topic. Theoretically, we endeavour to contribute by showing that firms can enhance their level of international performance through inter-firm collaboration. The authors believe this type of study would have considerable theoretical as well as managerial implications in this important field of research.