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The purpose of the present research is to investigate the mechanisms by which conflict with customers (i.e. customer mistreatment) contributes to employees’ work withdrawal.

This paper tests its hypotheses by means of a field study of a sample of front-line health care workers in China. Data were collected in three waves over four months; a total of 398 health care workers completed the questionnaires and represented the final sample. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that mistreatment by customers contributes to employees’ work withdrawal, and emotional exhaustion serves as a mediator in this linkage. In addition, social support moderates the positive relation between customer mistreatment and employees’ emotional exhaustion, whereas conscientiousness moderates the positive relation between emotional exhaustion and withdrawal behavior.

The sample used may not fully justify the generalizability of the research results. Without distinguishing different sources of social support may be another limitation. In addition, this study could be improved by using a multi-source survey design.

To help employees effectively cope with interpersonal conflict with customers, organizations should take action to promote communication between employees and their supervisors and coworkers. It is also advisable for organizations to adjust their selection strategies and hire front-line employees high in conscientiousness.

This research presents a resource-based framework to illuminate the detrimental effects of prolonged exposure to customer mistreatment on health care workers’ withdrawal behavior in Chinese context. Furthermore, this study examines factors that may serve to mitigate the harmful effects of customer mistreatment and regards workplace social support and conscientiousness as two different kinds of resources that can play dissimilar roles when employees are coping with customer mistreatment.

The CL60 steel wheels of subway vehicles operating on specific lines require frequent refurbishment due to rapid wear and tear. Considering this issue, MoS₂-based and graphite-based solid lubricants are used to reduce the wear rate of subway wheels and extend their service life.

Under laboratory conditions, the effect of MoS₂-based and graphite-based solid lubricants on the friction and wear performance of subway wheels and rails was evaluated using a modified GPM-60 wear testing machine.

Under laboratory conditions, MoS₂-based solid lubricants have the best effect in reducing wheel/rail wear, compared to the control group without lubrication, at 2 × 105 revolutions, the total wheel-rail wear decreased by 95.07%. However, when three types of solid lubricants are used separately, the hardness evolution of the wheel-rail contact surface exhibits different characteristics.

The research results provide important support for improving the lifespan of wheel and rail, extending the service cycle of wheel and rail, reducing the operating costs of subway systems, improving the safety of subway systems and providing wear reduction maintenance for other high wear mechanical components.

The experiment was conducted through the design and modification of a GPM-60 testing machine for wear testing. The experiment simulated the wheel-rail contact situation under actual subway operation and evaluated the effects of three different solid lubricants, MoS₂-based and graphite-based, on the wear performance and surface hardening evolution of subway wheel-rail.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that effective ethical leaders develop high quality relationships with team members; in particular, they manage their conflicts with team members cooperatively.

The authors empirically tested this hypothesis with responses from 117 managers and 302 subordinates.

Through cooperative conflict management, leaders develop trusting, mutually committed relationships. Ethical leaders and their employees avoid competitive conflict where they try to impose their ideas and resolutions on each other.

The findings suggest that ethical leaders can have a significant impact by fostering cooperative conflict management and reducing competitive conflict management. Thus, organizations are encouraged to adopt training and selection procedures to develop more ethical leaders.

This study adds to leadership research that effective leaders develop high quality relationships that help them influence employees as well as to be open and influenced by them.

Drawing on the cognitive-functional model of emotions and emotional contagion, the authors aim to examine the role of negative emotions in the diffusion of cancer tweets.

Using an integrated approach of social network and text analytics, the authors analyzed 142,883 cancer tweets from February to March 2018. The roles of negative emotions, emotional contagion, cancer themes and user influence on the diffusion of cancer tweets were examined.

Results indicated that cancer tweets expressing negativity and anger diffused more widely, while those expressing sadness or fear were less likely to diffuse. However, contrary to the authors’ expectation, cancer tweets expressing negative emotions (i.e. negativity, anger and fear) were less likely to arouse similar emotions among retweets, thus suggesting that emotions in cancer tweets were not as contagious as they seemed. Finally, user influence was the most important factor explaining the diffusion of cancer tweets, although cancer-related themes (i.e. affective, informative and social) had marginal effects on likelihood of diffusion.

Using a novel integrated social network–text analytics approach, the authors found that to understand cancer tweets' diffusion, it is critical to go beyond examining the content of tweets about cancer and the influence of messengers – the virality of cancer tweets is inextricable from the negative emotions.

The spread of rumors on social media has caused increasing concerns about an under-informed or even misinformed public when it comes to scientific issues. However, researchers have rarely investigated their diffusion in non-western contexts. This study aims to systematically examine the content and network structure of rumor-related discussions around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on Chinese social media.

This study identified 21,837 rumor-related posts of GMOs on Weibo, one of China's most popular social media platforms. An approach combining social network analysis and content analysis was employed to classify user attitudes toward rumors, measure the level of homophily of their attitudes and examine the nature of their interactions.

Though a certain level of homophily existed in the interaction networks, referring to the observed echo chamber effect, Weibo also served as a public forum for GMO discussions in which cross-cutting ties between communities existed. A considerable amount of interactions emerged between the pro- and anti-GMO camps, and most of them involved providing or requesting information, which could mitigate the likelihood of opinion polarization. Moreover, this study revealed the declining role of traditional opinion leaders and pointed toward the need for alternative strategies for efficient fact-checking.

In general, the findings of this study suggested that microblogging platforms such as Weibo can function as public forums for discussing GMOs that expose users to ideologically cross-cutting viewpoints. This study stands to provide important insights into the viral processes of scientific rumors on social media.

Drawing on the transaction theory of stress, the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize customer mistreatment as a stressor and examine how job routinization and proactive personality help employees cope with the effects of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. The interaction of job routinization and proactive personality was also tested.

In total, 128 hundred nurses were recruited to participate in the current study, which was a daily survey for two consecutive weeks (10 working days).

The results revealed that job routinization and proactive personality attenuated the effects of customer mistreatment on emotional exhaustion and work engagement. The analyses also showed that, with more proactive personality and high job routinization, the effects of customer mistreatment were minimized.

Job routinization is a type of job resources that attenuates the negative influence of customer mistreatment. Proactive personality strengthens job routinization’s function, when proactive personality and job routinization are both high, the ill effect of customer mistreatment will be minimized.

Drawing on the self-cognitive theory, this study aims to propose a conceptual model that links customer mistreatment with different types of helping behaviors through the self-efficacy mechanism.

The empirical analysis made use of the original data of three hotels located in southern China. The authors tested the hypotheses with a three-wave survey of a sample of 430 frontline workers in 95 groups.

Customer mistreatment may reduce employees’ self-efficacy, which has both positive and negative effects depending on the type of helping. Moreover, the coworkers’ supporting climate buffered the influence of self-efficacy on autonomous and dependent helping.

The authors resolve the ambiguity surrounding customer mistreatment-helping and self-efficacy-helping relations. Thus, the authors extend the knowledge on the influence of customer mistreatment and self-efficacy on helping behaviors by establishing that both positive and negative effects may exist depending on the type of helping. Moreover, this study identifies the predictive role of self-efficacy in autonomous and dependent helping.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain the reasonable dimensioning for each part and a full-dimension model of assembly dimensions.

The relational path graph of assembly dimension, the shortest-path spanning tree of functional dimension and a revised spanning tree are established in this paper.

The proposed method can obtain reasonable dimensioning of parts and establishment of dimension model in an assembly.

The proposed method can easily realise by computer and be more suitable to automatic dimensioning and establishment of dimension model of parts.

The purpose of this study is to provide insights into bootleg innovation by investigating whether perceived hindrance stressors play an important role in bootlegging and how different organizational ownership types (state-owned enterprises (SOEs) vs non-SOEs) affect this relationship.

The study samples comprised 3,967 employees from 674 knowledge-intensive companies in southern China. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the results show that hindrance stressors have a curvilinear (U-shaped) influence on bootleg innovation, and that the curve relationship between the hindrance stressors and bootlegging is more pronounced among employees in non-SOEs.

The findings indicate that either a low or high level of hindrance stressors can activate a high level of bootlegging activities among employees. These results suggest that managers need to be vigilant in detecting the level of hindrance because different motivations predominate at different stressor levels.

Based on the COR theory, the findings cast perceived hindrance stressors as an antecedent of bootlegging at the individual level. The inquiry into state ownership types further provides a comprehensive understanding of the non-linear relationship between hindrance stressors and bootlegging.

City wall is an important symbol of ancient Chinese cities with unique geographical and cultural characteristics. Thus, the preservation of this historic landmark is considered significantly important. However, numerous residential construction activities and changes in ecological environment have destructed a great portion of the city walls in recent years. This study looks into the preservation of the ancient city walls from the systematic perspective and in line with the actual characteristics of Longdong Region to provide guideline measures for the protection and restoration of such landmark. Cognition and preservation are adopted extensively to investigate the specific situation of and the factors that influence the ancient city walls in this region. Preservation strategies for the city walls, including the “Axis-Point” system, planning control, and authenticity readability, are presented. The ancient city walls in Longdong Region can be preserved by protecting the entire region, the city, and the main wall body. The systematic method and preservation strategies at the “macro perspective,” “medium perspective” and “micro perspective” levels can solve the preservation problems of the ancient city walls in Longdong Region effectively.