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Transformational leadership (TFL) has been identified by a number of studies as a positive force for business success. However, few studies have explicitly examined its influence on the cooperative employment relationship, such as frontline employees' voice in the workplace. Thus, this study conducts an empirical analysis of dual-level (i.e. group-focused and individual-focused) TFL and its effect on frontline employees' cooperative voice.

This empirical study is based on data from a survey of 468 full-time frontline workers from 38 hotels in China.

The empirical results revealed that both individual-level and group-level TFL are significantly associated with frontline employees' cooperative voice. Person–Organization value congruence and Person–Supervisor value congruence both act as mediators in the linkage between group-level TFL and employees' cooperative voice behaviors. The partial mediating role of Demand–Ability congruence on the relationship between individual-level TFL and cooperative voice is also established.

First, this study investigates the dual-level effects of TFL on the cooperative voice behavior of frontline employees. Second, this study explores whether three dimensions of value congruence mediate the influence of TFL on the voice behaviors of employees.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, test if information-adjusted noise model (IANM) can be applied in China; second, quantify noise trader risk, overreaction, underreaction and information pricing errors in that market; and third, explain the relationship between noise trader risk and return.

The authors use a behavioural asset pricing model (BAPM), CAPM, the information-adjusted noise model and model proposed by Ramiah and Davidson (2010).

The findings show that noise traders are active 99.7 per cent of the time on the Shenzhen A-share market. Furthermore, our results suggest that the Shenzhen market overreacts 41 per cent of the time, underreacts 18 per cent of the time and information pricing errors occur 40 per cent of the time.

Various methods have been applied to the Chinese stock market in an effort to measure noise trading activities and all of them failed to account for information arrival. Our study uses a superior and alternative model to detect noise trader risk, overreaction and underreaction in China.

This paper aims to explore the impact of a firm’s political connections on its economic value added (EVA) performance while treating connection heterogeneity and product diversification as moderators.

Based on data collected from 1,143 Chinese manufacturing listed firms in China’s A-share market from 2012 to 2017, this study conducted panel data analysis to investigate proposed relationships.

The findings provide evidence that political connections promote EVA performance of enterprises and both connection heterogeneity and product diversification negatively moderate the political connections – EVA performance relationship.

Drawing sights from the resource-based view, this study investigates the influence of corporate political connections on EVA performance, considering contingent factors of connection heterogeneity and corporate strategy (i.e. product diversification). It, thus, contributes to the literature on political connections by providing additional evidence to explaining the inconclusive findings on the political connections–firm performance relationship and extending prior research by emphasizing the moderating roles of connection heterogeneity and corporate strategy. It also complements prior research on EVA performance by exploring its antecedents.

A mesoscopic phase field (PF) model is proposed to simulate the meso-failure process of lightweight concrete.

The PF damage model is applied to the meso-failure process of lightweight concrete through the ABAQUS subroutine user-defined element (UEL). And the improved staggered iteration scheme with a one-pass procedure is used to alternately solve the coupling equations.

These examples clearly show that the crack initiation of the lightweight concrete specimens mainly occurs in the ceramsite aggregates with weak strength, especially in the larger aggregates. The crack propagation paths of the specimens with the same volume fraction of light aggregates are completely different, but the crack propagation paths all pass through the ceramsite aggregates near the cracks. The results also showed that with the increase in the volume fractions of the aggregates, the slope and the peak loads of the force-deflection (F-d) curves gradually decrease, the load-bearing capacity of the lightweight concrete specimens decreases, and crack branching and coalescence are less likely during crack propagation.

The mesostructures with a mortar matrix, aggregates and an interfacial transition zone (ITZ) are generated by an automatic generation and placement program, thus incorporating the typical three-phase characteristics of lightweight concrete into the PF model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a human activity-aware adaptive shared control solution for human–robot interaction in surgical operation. Hands-on control and teleoperation are two main procedures switched frequently in teleoperated minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The detailed human activity in the procedures can be defined and recognized using the sensor information. In this paper, a novel continuous adaptive shared control method is proposed for manipulators with Cartesian impedance control in the surgical scenario.

A human activity-aware shared control solution by adjusting the weight function is introduced to achieve smooth transition among different human activities, including hands-on control and teleoperation. Instead of introducing various controllers and switching among them during the surgical procedures, the proposed solution integrated all the human activity-based controllers into a single controller and the transition among the procedures is smooth and stable. The effectiveness of the proposed control approach was verified in a lab setup environment. The results prove that the robot behavior is stable and smooth. The algorithm is feasible and can achieve a human activity-aware adaptive shared control solution for human–robot interaction in surgical operation.

Based on the experiment, the results confirm that the proposed human activity-aware adaptive shared control solution can switch the device behavior automatically using the real-time sensor information. The transition between different activities is smooth and stable.

For teleoperated surgical applications, the proposed method integrated different controllers for various human activities into a single controller by recognizing the activities using the real-time sensor information and the transition between different procedures is smooth and stable. It eases the surgical work for the surgeon and enhances the safety during the transition of control modes. The presented scheme provides a general solution to address the switching of working procedures in teleoperated MIS.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to propose human activity-aware adaptive shared control solution for human–robot interaction in surgical operations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence mechanism of different interface component surface textures on the ultrasonic motor (USM) output performance.

The energy transmission mechanism of the traveling-wave ultrasonic motor 60 (TRUM-60) was numerically and experimentally investigated by fabricating dimple textures with different feature types on the friction material and the stator.

Textured friction material can increase the contact range effectively, and thus, can improve the friction characteristics of the interface and the output performance of the TRUM-60. The experimental results verified the expected influence mechanism and demonstrated that the use of either a textured friction material or stator has a very different effect on USM output performance. A textured PI-based friction material improved the TRUM-60 output performance, resulting in a maximum energy conversion efficiency of 57.11%. However, a textured stator degraded the TRUM-60 output performance, resulting in a minimum energy conversion efficiency of only 44.92%.

The results of this study provide a theoretical foundation for improved USM designs with textured interfaces.

Anti-epidemic Emergency Projects (AEEPs) have unique characteristics such as a short construction period, high-quality requirements, complex construction environment, many construction participants and many uncertain affecting factors. The purpose of this paper was to propose the establishment method for the Construction Community (CC) of AEEPs (CC-AEEPs) by analyzing the management features of AEEPs, to establish the method of the Social Network Analysis (SNA) for CC-AEEPs, and to apply this method and the framework to Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital for their verification.

According to the CC theory, this paper explored the member composition and the establishment method for CC-AEEPs. The optimal management factors of CC-AEEPs were proposed by combining the management features of AEEPs and the SNA method for CC-AEEPs was further established. Finally, the applicability of the method was verified through a case study, and some countermeasures for the CC-AEEP social networks were proposed.

The establishment of CC-AEEPs is an important guarantee to complete AEEPs with top speed and high quality. Ten types of CC-AEEP members all played different but irreplaceable roles in cooperative construction, among which the Government, the Contractor, and the Supervisor had outstanding performances. The SNA method could effectively analyze the complexity and cooperative relationship among the members in four aspects. The case study of Huoshenshan Hospital validated the important role of CC-AEEP and its social network in the AEEP research providing beneficial enlightenment for the cooperative optimization path of the AEEP construction participants.

The new establishment method for CC-AEEPs was proposed from the perspective of “cooperation among human, society, and engineering” according to the theories of the engineering sociology and the CC. In this paper, the SNA method was applied to the research on the AEEP construction for the first time and the SNA method for CC-AEEPs was purposed. The optimal management factors of CC-AEEPs and the expansion path of the CC-AEEP social networks were proposed according to the whole-process tracking of AEEPs in Wuhan.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of gender and strength of gender identification on employees’ perception of gender discrimination. It also explores whether gender comparison and perceived gender bias against women act as mediators in the above relationships. It aims to advance the understanding of the processes leading to individual’s perception of gender discrimination in the Chinese workplace.

Data were collected from 362 workers via an employee survey in three large companies in China. The human resource staff helped us to distribute a self-administered questionnaire to the employees, and the authors assured them of confidentiality and protected their anonymity. To test the hypotheses, the authors employed structural equation modeling. The authors first conducted confirmatory factor analysis on the measurement model, and then the authors estimated three nested structural models to test the mediating hypotheses.

The results reveal that gender and strength of gender identification are related to perceived gender discrimination. The authors further found that gender comparison and perceived gender bias against women partially mediated the relationship between gender and perceived gender discrimination, while gender comparison fully mediated the relationship between strength of gender identification and perceived gender discrimination.

The study helps managers understand why and how their subordinates form perceptions of gender discrimination. Given the findings, they should be aware of the importance of gender identity, gender comparison, and gender bias in organizational practices in affecting such perceptions.

This study is the first exploration of the complex relationships among gender, gender identification, gender comparison, perceived gender bias against women, and perceived gender discrimination. It shows the salient role of gender comparison and gender bias against women in shaping employees’ perceptions of gender discrimination, apart from the direct effects of gender and strength of gender identification.

Examines the ninth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

The integration and retrieval of the vast data have attracted sufficient attention, thus the W3C workgroup releases R2RML to standardize the transformation from relational data to semantic-aware data. However, it only provides a data transform mechanism to resource description framework (RDF). The generation of mapping alignments still needs manual work or other algorithms. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a domain-oriented automatic mapping method and an application of the R2RML standard.

In this paper, materials science is focussed to show an example of domain-oriented mapping. source field concept and M3B2 (Metal Materials Mapping Background Base) knowledge bases are established to support the auto-recommending algorithm. As for the generation of RDF files, the idea is to generate the triples and the links, respectively. The links of the triples follow the object-subject relationship, and the links of the object properties can be achieved by the range individuals and the trail path.

Consequently based on the previous work, the authors proposed Engine for Metal Materials Mapping Background Base (EM3B2), a semantic integration engine for materials science. EM3B2 not only offers friendly graphical interfaces, but also provides auto-recommending mapping based on materials knowledge to enable users to avoid vast manually work. The experimental result indicates that EM3B2 supplies accurate mapping. Moreover, the running time of E3MB2 is also competitive as classical methods.

This paper proposed EM3B2 semantic integration engine, which contributes to the relational database-to-RDF mapping by the application of W3C R2RML standard and the domain-oriented mapping.