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This research aims to explore the fine-grained relationships between nurse staffing and hospital operational performance with respect to care quality and operating costs. The authors also investigate the moderation effect of competition in local hospital markets on these relationships.

A six-year panel data is assembled from five separate sources to obtain information of 2,524 USA hospitals. Fixed-effect (FE) models are used to test the proposed hypotheses.

First, nurse staffing is initially associated with improved care quality until nurse staffing reaches a turning point, beyond which nurse staffing is associated with worse care quality. Second, a similar pattern applies to the relationship between nurse staffing and operating costs, although the turning point is at a much lower nurse staffing level. Third, market competition moderates the relationship between nurse staffing and care quality so that the turning point of nurse staffing will be higher when the degree of competition is higher. This shift of turning point is also observed in the relationship between nurse staffing and operating costs.

The study identifies three ranges of nurse staffing in which hospitals will likely experience simultaneous improvements, a tradeoff or simultaneous decline of care quality and operating costs when investing in more nursing capacity. Hospitals should adjust nurse staffing levels to the right directions to achieve better care or reduce operating costs.

Nurses constitute the largest provider group in hospitals and profoundly impact care quality and operating costs among all health care professionals. Optimizing the level of nurse staffing, therefore, can significantly impact the care quality and operating costs of hospitals.

To solve the problems caused by using precise molds for copper column positioning in the current column grid array package, this paper aims to optimize the proposed friction plunge micro-welding (FPMW) technology without mold assistance, to overcome the problems of low interfacial bonding strength, shrinkage cavities and flash defects caused by the low hold-tight force of solder on the copper column.

A pressurizing device installed under the drill chuck of the friction welding machine is designed, which is used to apply a static constraint to the solder ball obliquely downward to increase the hold-tight force of the peripheral solder on the copper column during welding and promote the friction metallurgical connection between them.

The results show that the application of static constraint during welding can increase the compactness of the solder near the friction interface and effectively inhibit occurrences of flash, shrinkage cavities and crystal defects such as vacancies. Therefore, compared with the unconstrained (UC) FPMW, the average strength of the statically constrained (SC) FPMW joints and aged SC-FPMW joints can be increased by 51.1% and 122.6%, and the problem of the excessive growth of the interfacial connection layer in the UC-FPMW joints during aging can be effectively avoided.

The application of static constraint effectively inhibits the occurrence of defects such as shrinkage cavities, vacancies and flash in FPMW joints, and the welding quality is significantly improved.

Drawing upon research in consumer behavior, the purpose of this paper is to deploy an alternative way to predict behavioral intention with customer technology beliefs and experience in e‐brokerage services.

This study tests the proposed framework and relevant hypotheses with survey responses collected from 258 online investors.

Technology‐ready (TR) customer segments vary in their evaluations of customer‐service interfaces; interface evaluations affect cognitive service experience; and interface evaluations and cognitive experience affect customers' behavioral intentions.

This study indicates that flow experience emerges as an important factor for achieving sustainable competitive advantages in e‐brokerage services. The research findings and relevant hypotheses might not apply to low‐credence services.

The findings indicate that service designers need to examine the life cycle of the intended service offerings and customize corresponding service/product features based on customers' technology beliefs and personal characteristics, which can further lead to maximized flow experience and increased intention rate.

The paper is among the first attempts to examine how psychographic features affect customers' experience and valuation of certain service system interfaces from service design perspective.

A study on predicting the stiffness of woven fabric using an artificial neural network was conducted. A neural network system trained with a back-propagation algorithm performed functional mapping between the fabric surface and mechanical properties and the evaluated hand stiffness values. The correlation coefficient was applied to confirm the effectiveness of the model that had been developed. It was established that a hand characteristic value of stiffness can be predicted from the mechanical and surface properties of fabric.

Stage models have benefited global managers by seeing internationalization as an evolutionary and learning process that involved making careful and incremental changes. What the stage models lack, however, are specification of internal problems and hurdles that managers will face during this organizational change process. We attempted to fill this knowledge gap by exploring types of managerial dilemmas that organizations will confront as they internationalize. This adaptive choice process of internationalization was discussed in this paper through the case of a domestic company during its overseas expansion. Our research shows that the internationalization process often creates managerial dilemmas for organizations in terms of strategic, structural, and human resource changes. There are also strong interactions among these dilemmas such that the decision regarding one dilemma may often impact how other dilemmas can be resolved Firms that are able to resolve these dilemmas, while considering their interactions, can become more successful in their internationalization process. These findings were developed into propositions regarding how companies can manage the process of internationalization more successfully. We also addressed specifically how the adaptive choice model would complement the stage models and enrich our understanding of the corporate internationalization process.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to identify sources of variation in horizontal stabilizer assembly using FEA (finite element analysis) and PCA (principal component analysis).

The horizontal stabilizer is assembled by long and thin‐walled deformable aluminum components. Part‐to‐part assembly of these compliant components regularly causes difficulties associated with dimensional variations. Finite element modeling and PCA are employed to predict the propagation of variation from edge to horizontal stabilizer.

The variation analysis combined with pattern fitting method is demonstrated in a case study of the horizontal stabilizer assembly system and good performance is obtained. The results have shown that the FEA and PCA method has the capability of predicting, to an acceptable degree of accuracy, the overall geometrical variations propagation of the edges and trailing edge.

The results of this research will enhance the understanding of the compliant components deformation in assembly, and help to systematically improve the precision control efficiency in civil aircraft assembly.

In an era of burgeoning activity in online retail in India, the role of web-store design is paramount. Web-store design elements such as website functionality, brand assortment and product quality are expected to generate customer loyalty.

Using data collected from 553 students from two universities in north India, the present study investigates the indirect effect of web-store dimensions (through website functionality, brand assortment and product quality) on online store loyalty via an enjoyment state (flow) and customer satisfaction. Serial mediation has been analysed through PROCESS macro developed by Hayes version 3.0. In addition to this, the moderating role of gender and purchase frequency has also been investigated.

The present study renders support to serial mediation between website functionality, flow, customer satisfaction and loyalty. However, the path between brand assortment and loyalty is more strongly mediated by customer satisfaction only. Males experience less flow as compared to females while handling brand assortment on websites. The three-way interaction between brand assortment, gender and purchase frequency is also statistically significant.

The study examines the manner in which online retailers can choose to build customer loyalty when they try to build retail image using web store functionality and /or product/brand assortments. The study offers insights to retailers about how and when to focus on hedonism versus customer satisfaction or both of them in conjunction to enhance customer loyalty. This study is important as it investigates the relationships in Indian scenario witnessing a high rate of growth in online retail which can tremendously affect these relationships.

The application of self‐service technology in transaction‐based e‐service (e.g. online financial services) creates a challenge for firms: what combination of features should they offer to satisfy needs from different customer segments? This paper seeks to address the above question by highlighting similarities and differences of consumer preferences among self‐service, hybrid service and professional service segments for online financial services.

This study employs a web‐based discrete choice experiment, in which 1,319 consumers were offered different account alternatives, which include features for self‐service and professional assistance, price per transaction, and promotion offers.

The results demonstrate that overall, consumer preferences for features of online financial services differ across segments. Moreover, with the variation in the strength of self‐reliance, interesting trends regarding the relative importance of features are observed. With the given customer segments, this study also identifies several demographic features with significant effects on the choice of service alternatives through a multinomial logistic model.

The authors believe that these results have both managerial and research implications for design and operations strategy formulation for online financial services.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of flow experience and e-trust in online consumers’ stickiness intentions from a perspective of information quality and discuss how to retain these consumers.

The authors proposed a research model by integrating three dimensions of information quality, flow experience and e-trust. These factors were analyzed to explore the direct and indirect effects on consumers’ stickiness intention. Online questionnaires were adopted to collect data and 259 valid samples were analyzed by structural equation modeling approach.

The findings show that information quality provided by B2C online shopping malls can indirectly affect consumers’ stickiness intention through the mediation effects of flow experience and e-trust. Besides, flow experience can also significantly affect e-trust and then indirectly influence stickiness intention.

The findings suggest that information quality can trigger the effects of flow experience and e-trust to keep stickiness of online consumers. Besides, in the context of online shopping, flow experience would promote consumers’ trust toward e-retailers. Some other theoretical and practical implications are also provided.

This study indicates the effects of flow experience and e-trust on stickiness intention from an information quality perspective. Meanwhile, the authors also intend to discuss the relationship between consumers’ flow experience and e-trust in the context of B2C online shopping.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an improved Mie-Grüneisen mixture model to simulate underwater explosion (UNDEX).

By using Mie-Grüneisen equations of state (EOS) to model explosive charge, liquid water and solid structure, the whole fluid field is considered as a multi-phases mixture under Mie-Grüneisen EOS. Then by introducing auxiliary variables in Eulerian model and using mass fraction to establish a diffusion balance, a new improved Mie-Grüneisen mixture model is presented here. For the new reconstructed mixture model, a second order MUSCL scheme with TVD limiter is employed to solve the multi-phase Riemann problem.

Numerical examples show that the results obtained by Mie-Grüneisen mixture model are quite closed to theoretical and empirical data. The model can be also used in 2-D fluid-structure problem of UNDEX effectively and it is proved that the deformation of structure can be clearly described by mass fraction.

The FVM model based on mass fraction can only describe the motion of compressible material under impact. Material failure or large deformation needs a modification about the EOS or implementations of other models (i.e. FEM model).

An improved non-oscillation Mie-Grüneisen mixture model, which based on mass fraction, is given in the present paper. The present Mie-Grüneisen mixture model provides a simplified and efficient way to simulate UNDEX. The feasibility of this model to simulate the detonation impacts on different mediums, including water and other metal mediums, is tested and verified here. Then the model is applied to the simulation of underwater contact explosion problem. In the simulation, deformation of structure under explosion loads, as well as second shock wave, are studied here.