Search results

Under the carbon regulation mechanism, managing operational strategies is a challenging task. Green innovation is introduced into a hybrid system of manufacturing and remanufacturing to handle the carbon emission constraints in a dynamic market environment. This paper aims to investigate the joint dynamic green innovation policy and pricing strategies in a hybrid manufacturing and remanufacturing system.

This paper first considers a monopolistic manufacturer who offers brand-new products and remanufactured items at the same price to consumers. Subsequently, the authors extend their analyses to distinct pricing strategies for both newly manufactured products and refurnished ones in such a hybrid system. Two different cases are considered: a loose carbon emission constraint and a binding carbon emission constraint. By solving the dynamic optimization problem, the differential game and Pontryagin’s maximum principle are used to obtain the joint green innovation and pricing strategies.

The retail price first increases then declines over a single period. The green innovation diminishes in the same pricing decision model, while it first increases then declines in a distinct pricing decision model over a single planning horizon. The green innovation investment as well as the retail price are discouraged by an emission cap and recycling fraction. The distinct retail price fluctuates violently, and they are, in descending order of the highest peak price as follows: the newly manufactured product, the same pricing product and the repaired product. Carbon emission caps that are either too high or too low decrease the revenue of the manufacturer. A small emission constraint margin benefits the manufacturer. The recycling policy, as well as other parameters, affects whether the hybrid system attains the carbon emission constraint or not, which suggests that the recycling policy is complementary to the carbon emission constraint mechanism in the hybrid system.

These results offer managerial implications to the hybrid system in terms of green innovation, pricing strategies and recycling policy.

This paper is among the first papers to research the joint dynamic green innovation policy and pricing strategies with/without a carbon emission constraint in a hybrid manufacturing and remanufacturing system with a differential game. Moreover, this paper presents a potential way of investigating other common resource constraints by a differential game in a manufacturing/remanufacturing system or closed loop supply chain.

Following the call to explore what leadership theory could be applicable in temporary organizations, the purpose of this study was to develop an integrative model linking the effects of paternalistic leadership styles (i.e. authoritarian, benevolent and moral) on the behavioral integration (BI) of top management teams (TMTs) in megaproject settings.

The performance of the research model was tested based on empirical data collected from a sample of 43 megaproject TMTs.

The results show that the moral leadership style can significantly stimulate the BI of TMTs, whereas authoritarian leadership has a negative impact and benevolent leadership has no significant impact. Furthermore, trust in leader plays a partial mediating role between paternalistic leadership and BI, and the power distance value of TMT positively moderates the links between authoritarian and moral leadership styles and BI.

The TMT sample was drawn from China's megaprojects, most of which have global influence (e.g. Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge and Shanghai Expo), but the sampling approach limits the generalizability of the research findings to other contexts.

This study introduces the concept of BI into the realm of megaproject management and provides a novel perspective (i.e. paternalistic leadership) for exploring its antecedents. The findings, therefore, contribute to the literature by broadening the megaproject management research with a microfoundation perspective and by extending the extant paternalistic leadership in the context of temporary organizational settings.

The purpose of this paper is to show the impact of digital agriculture on food supply chain, research trend, emphasis and implications for future research.

The paper analyzes how the digital technology reshapes the production, assembly, transaction, retail and logistics. Impact from each main technological progress is discussed.

First, digital agriculture develops quickly and changes all parts of the food supply chain. Second, while many technological progresses show their impacts in agriculture and food sector, e-commerce and progress of artificial intelligence show its comprehensive impact on the argi-food sector.

The paper shows the technological trend and progress in food and agriculture sector. Researchers focusing on agricultural economics and agribusiness should pay attention to recent developments in the real world, know the recent developments from other disciplines, get more data for empirical research and show the impact of digital agriculture on consumer's preference and social welfare.

The main aim of this paper was to study the self-lubricating behavior and failure mechanism of silver-rich solid film for in-depth analyzing of the friction and wear property of TiAl-10 wt. per cent Ag self-lubricating composite.

The friction and wear property of TiAl-10 wt. per cent Ag self-lubricating composite sliding against Si3N4 ball was tested under the testing conditions of ball-on-disk wear system. Field emission scanning electron microscopy and electron probe microanalyzer were used to analyze the surface morphology of silver-rich solid film. The main element contents were tested by energy dispersive spectroscopy. Silver phase on wear scar could be well identified using X-ray photo-electron spectroscopy. The theory calculation of shearing stress on wear scar was executed to discuss the local failure mechanism of silver-rich solid film. The lubricating role of silver was also discussed to analyze the anti-friction and anti-wear behavior of silver-rich solid film.

The friction coefficients and wear rates of TASC gradually reduced at 0-65 min, and approached to small values (0.31 in friction coefficient and 3.10×104 mm3N-1m-1 in wear rate) at 65-75 min. The excellent friction and wear behavior of TASC was mainly attributed to the lubricating property of silver-rich film at 65-75 min. At 12→20 N, surface shearing stress increased up to 146.31 MPa, and exceeded more than the shearing strength (125 MPa) of silver-rich film, which caused the propagating of fatigue crack and the destroying of silver-rich film, leading to high friction and severe wear.

It is important that the self-lubricating behavior and local failure of solid film is explored for further understanding the friction and wear property of TiAl alloys.

This study aimed to investigate associations between the organisational and cultural contexts in which Chinese teachers work, the influence of these on their understandings of professionalism, and relationships between these and their perceived willingness and commitment to be effective in teaching to their best.

The research was part of a two-country collaboration between the universities of Beijing and Sydney into Australian and Chinese teachers' perceptions of influences on their professionalism in which research protocols were jointly developed and implemented. This paper focusses mainly upon the Chinese research but also refers to key differences between Australian and Chinese teachers' perspectives. Seventeen teachers in early, middle and later career phases were recruited from a convenience sample of primary and secondary schools in Beijing. Qualitative data analyses of individual interviews, and cross case comparative analyses were conducted.

The analyses of the data from Beijing indicated that almost all teachers emphasised their strong moral purposes and commitment to teach to their best, despite identifying the challenges of workload, school contexts and cultures and personal circumstances, which tested their resolve. In contrast, concerns about teacher autonomy and agency, which were common in the Australian study and other published research literature, were not highly visible in the Chinese data.

The authors acknowledge that this study was small scale and data were collected from a narrow sample from one urban region of China, and we should be cautious with the generalisability of findings to other regions and schools of China since there are significant discrepancies between developed coastal areas and large cities and the remote rural areas in China. Furthermore, interview data were only collected once, restricting insight to a snapshot in time. This research may be seen as an encouragement to researchers from other regions and countries to further explore the impact of socially situated understandings of teacher professionalism on practice. Future research could also benefit from utilising multiple data sources, longitudinal design and cross-cultural collaborations to further explore the challenge of defining teachers' understandings of professionalism locally while engaging with global perspectives.

The practical implications relate to (1) expanding conceptualisations of teacher professionalism by developing locally nuanced understandings of perceptions and enactments of professionalism in different contexts across the profession, which take account of the unique roles of national and local cultural contexts; (2) designing initial teacher education and continuing professional development programmes so that they take account of the influences on the professions' ideals and individual teacher identities, of the ideological and practical interplay in the workplace of structures such as mandated standards, and different socio-economic geographical settings (e.g. rural and urban); (3) designing leadership development programmes that take account of research on associations between school leaders' values, qualities and practices on school cultures and their effects on teachers' well-being, and capacities and capabilities to fulfil their understandings of being professionals and teach to their best.

The social implications relate to (1) further research on the associations between the effects of external policy demands on teachers' work and work–life tensions, teachers' sustained commitment and quality; and (2) further research on the impact of the collective influences of national cultures, broad-based policy conditions, personal values and the demands of particular schools, parents and students that influence teachers' experience, perceptions and enactments of professionalism in order to provide further insights into understanding the complexity of teachers' lives and promoting teachers' sustained enactments of professionalism in broad contexts.

The research findings, though tentative, revealed that the altruistic nature of their mission to serve students and the parental community was the dominant marker of professionalism for teachers in China, regardless of school structures, cultures, academic achievement imperatives and personal circumstance; and that their professionalism was informed by the socio-cultural formation of individual and collective moral responsibility, reinforced through national educational policies. These findings differed from the concerns reported by the teachers in the Australian study, which aligned with literature that suggests that teacher professionalism is being eroded through neo-liberal government policies, excessive workloads and performance-oriented cultures. Though the comparative data set is small, these findings suggest that whilst there are increasing policy convergences across nations, which seek to define teacher professionalism through their abilities to make improvements in students' measurable academic achievement, how teachers in different countries and cultures define themselves as professionals may differ.

This study aims to investigate the surface modification on 20CrMnTi gear steel individually treated by diamond-like carbon films and nitride coatings.

For this purpose, the mechanical properties of a-C:H, ta-C and AlCrSiN coatings are characterized by nano-indentation and scratch tests. The friction and wear behaviors of these three coatings are evaluated by ball-on-disc tribological experiments under dry contact conditions.

The results show that the a-C:H coating has the highest coating-substrate adhesion strength (495 mN) and the smoothest surface (Ra is about 0.045 µm) compared with the other two coatings. The AlCrSiN coating shows the highest mean coefficient of friction (COF), whereas the ta-C coating exhibits the lowest one (steady at about 0.16). The carbon-based coatings possess excellent self-lubricating properties compared with nitride ceramic ones, which effectively reduce the COF by about 64%. The major failure mode of carbon-based coatings in dry contact is slight abrasive wear. The damage of AlCrSiN coating is mainly adhesive wear and abrasive wear.

It is suggested that the carbon-based film can effectively improve the friction-reducing and wear resistance performance of the gear steel surface, which has a promising application prospect in the mechanical transmission field.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-05-2023-0129/