Search results

We attempt to construct a grey three-way conflict analysis model with constraints to deal with correlated conflict problems with uncertain information.

In order to address these correlated conflict problems with uncertain information, considering the interactive influence and mutual restraints among agents and portraying their attitudes toward the conflict issues, we utilize grey numbers and three-way decisions to propose a grey three-way conflict analysis model with constraints. Firstly, based on the collected information, we introduced grey theory, calculated the degree of conflict between agents and then analyzed the conflict alliance based on the three-way decision theory. Finally, we designed a feedback mechanism to identify key agents and key conflict issues. A case verifies the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed model.

The results show that the proposed model can portray their attitudes toward conflict issues and effectively extract conflict-related information.

By employing this approach, we can provide the answers to Deja’s fundamental questions regarding Pawlak’s conflict analysis: “what are the underlying causes of conflict?” and “how can a viable consensus strategy be identified?”

This study aims to integrate the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the value-belief-norm (VBN) theory into a meta-analytic framework to synthesize green consumption literature.

By integrating the findings from 173 studies, a meta-analysis was performed adopting several analytical methods: bivariate analysis, moderation analysis and path analysis.

VBN- and TPB-based psychological factors (adverse consequences, ascribed responsibility, personal norms, subjective norms, attitude and perceived behavioral control) mediate the effects of altruistic, biospheric and egoistic values on green purchase intention. Further, inconsistencies in the proposed relationships are due to cultural factors (i.e. individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity–femininity, short- vs long-term orientation and indulgence-restraint) and countries’ human development status.

The authors selected papers published in English; hence, other relevant papers in this domain published in other languages might have been missed.

The findings are useful to marketers of green offerings in designing strategies, i.e. specific messages, targeting different customers based on countries’ cultural score and human development index, to harvest positive customer responses.

This study is the pioneering attempt to synthesize the TPB- and VBN-based quantitative literature on green consumer behavior to resolve the reported inconsistent findings.

To develop electrode materials for supercapacitor with superior electrochemical performance and simple preparation process, the purpose of this study is to prepare flexible CC/NiS/a-NiS electrodes with self-supporting structure by loading hydrothermally synthesized a-NiS particles along with nano-NiS on carbon cloth by electroplating method.

The effects of current densities, temperatures and pH values on the loading amount and uniformity of the active substances during the plating process were investigated on the basis of optimization of surface morphology, crystalline structure and electrochemical evaluation as the cyclic voltammetry curves, constant current charge–discharge curves and AC impedance.

The a-NiS particles on CC/NiS/a-NiS were mostly covered by the plated nano-NiS, which behaved as a bulge and provided a larger specific surface area. The CC/NiS/a-NiS electrode prepared with the optimized parameter exhibited a specific capacitance of 115.13 F/g at a current density of 1 A/g and a Coulomb efficiency of 84% at 5 A/g, which is superior to that of CC/NiS electrode prepared by electroplating at a current density of 10 mA/cm², a temperature of 55°C and a pH of 4, demonstrating its fast charge response of the electrode and potential application in wearable electronics.

This study provides an integrated solution for the development of specifically structured NiS-based electrode for supercapacitor with simple process, low cost and high electrochemical charge/discharge performance, and the simple and easy-to-use method is also applicable to other electrochemically active composites.

Heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and cooling (HVAC) systems are crucial in daily health-care facility services. Design-related defects can lead to maintenance issues, causing service disruptions and cost overruns. These defects can be avoided if a link between the early design stages and maintenance feedback is established. This study aims to use experts’ experience in HVAC maintenance in health-care facilities to list and evaluate the risk of each maintenance issue caused by a design defect, supported by the literature.

Following semistructured interviews with experts, 41 maintenance issues were identified as the most encountered issues. Subsequently, a survey was conducted in which 44 participants evaluated the probability and impact of each design-caused issue.

Chillers were identified as the HVAC components most prone to design defects and cost impact. However, air distribution ducts and air handling units are the most critical HVAC components for maintaining healthy conditions inside health-care facilities.

The unavailability of comprehensive data on the cost impacts of all design-related defects from multiple health-care facilities limits the ability of HVAC designers to furnish case studies and quantitative approaches.

This study helps HVAC designers acquire prior knowledge of decisions that may have led to unnecessary and avoidable maintenance. These design-related maintenance issues may cause unfavorable health and cost consequences.

The proposed model aims to consider the flying hours as a criterion to initiate maintenance operation. Based on this condition, aircraft must be checked before flying hours threshold is met. After receiving maintenance service, the model ignores previous flying hours and the aircraft can keep on flying until the threshold value is reached again. Moreover, the model considers aircraft age and efficiency to assign them to flights.

The aircraft maintenance routing problem (AMRP), as one of the most important problems in the aviation industry, determines the optimal route for each aircraft along with meeting maintenance requirements. This paper presents a bi-objective mixed-integer programming model for AMRP in which several criteria such as aircraft efficiency and ferrying flights are considered.

As the solution approaches, epsilon-constraint method and a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), including a new initializing algorithm, are used. To verify the efficiency of NSGA-II, 31 test problems in different scales are solved using NSGA-II and GAMS. The results show that the optimality gap in NSGA-II is less than 0.06%. Finally, the model was solved based on real data of American Eagle Airlines extracted from Kaggle datasets.

The authors confirm that it is an original paper, has not been published elsewhere and is not currently under consideration of any other journal.

In the context of Industry 4.0, intelligent construction technologies (ICT) represented by information technology and networking will undoubtedly provide new impetus to the development of the prefabricated building supply chain (PBSC), but they will also bring various potential risks. So far, there is a large lack of research on the comprehensive consideration of the risks associated with the intelligent transformation of PBSC based on the information sharing perspective, and the critical risks and interactions are still unclear, making it difficult to identify efficient risk mitigation strategies. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal the interactions between stakeholders and clarify the critical risk nodes and interactions in information sharing of PBSC (IS-PBSC), and propose targeted risk mitigation strategies.

Firstly, this paper creatively delineates the risks and critical stakeholders of IS-PBSC. Secondly, Data is collected through questionnaires to understand the degree of risks impact. Thirdly, with the help of NetMiner 4 software, social network analysis is conducted and IS-PBSC risk network is established to reveal critical risk nodes and interactions. Finally, further targeted discussion of critical risk nodes, the effectiveness and reasonableness of the risk mitigation strategies are proposed and verified through NetMiner 4 software simulation.

The results show that the critical risks cover the entire process of information sharing, with the lack of information management norms and other information assurance-related risks accounting for the largest proportion. In addition, the government dominates in risk control, followed by other stakeholders. The implementation of risk mitigation strategies is effective, with the overall network density reduced by 41.15% and network cohesion reduced by 24%.

In the context of Industry 4.0, ICT represented by information technology and networking will undoubtedly provide new impetus to the development of the PBSC, but they will also bring various potential risks. So far, there is a large lack of research on the comprehensive consideration of the risks associated with the intelligent transformation of PBSC based on the information sharing perspective, and the critical risks and interactions are still unclear, making it difficult to identify efficient risk mitigation strategies.

Based on the results of risk network visualization analysis, this paper proposes an ICT-based IS-PBSC mechanism that promotes the development of the integration of ICT and PBSC while safeguarding the benefits of various stakeholders.

The aim of this paper is to solve the toxic and harmful problems caused by traditional volatile corrosion inhibitor (VCI) and to analyze the effect of the layered structure on the enhancement of the volatile corrosion inhibition prevention performance of amino acids.

The carbon dots-montmorillonite (DMT) hybrid material is prepared via hydrothermal process. The effect of the DMT-modified alanine as VCI for mild steel is investigated by volatile inhibition sieve test, volatile corrosion inhibition ability test, electrochemical measurement and surface analysis technology. It demonstrates that the DMT hybrid materials can improve the ability of alanine to protect mild steel against atmospheric corrosion effectively. The presence of carbon dots enlarges the interlamellar spacing of montmorillonite and allows better dispersion of alanine. The DMT-modified alanine has higher volatilization ability and an excellent corrosion inhibition of 85.3% for mild steel.

The DMT hybrid material provides a good template for the distribution of VCI, which can effectively improve the vapor-phase antirust property of VCI.

The increased volatilization rate also means increased VCI consumption and higher costs.

Provides a new way of thinking to replace the traditional toxic and harmful VCI.

For the first time, amino acids are combined with nano laminar structures, which are used to solve the problem of difficult volatilization of amino acids.

Microfinance programs across the countries are designed on the self-help and peer pressure model, aim at microentrepreneurship development. Despite of significant studies on microfinance-supported microentrepreneurship (MSM), not a single literature examines it from the systems thinking. In addition to that, the extant literature did not look MSM from the behavioral perspectives. To address the above gaps, the present study aims to examine self-help group (SHG)-based microfinance programs from the systems approach using the Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) model.

Information gathered from 786 women SHG members from four states of India through a structured interview schedule. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) were conducted to process data. Additional statistical tests were performed to test the reliability and validity.

It was found that the “positive stimulus” (social intermediation, financial intermediation and business development services) positively impacted; and “negative stimulus” (intermediation accountability, and intermediation assumption) negatively impact, to “motive” (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control) for micro-entrepreneurship in the SHG-based microfinance. Further, “motive” positively predicted “behavioral intention”; the “behavioral intention” positively determined “consequences” of micro-entrepreneurship. Intermediation as stimuli acted as “input”; the motive and behavioral intention acted as the “process”, and the consequence acted as the “output” in the SHG-based microentrepreneurship system.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first one to examine the behavioral systems of microentrepreneurship programs through the Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) model.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2022-0801

Cyberloafing is an organization-directed counterproductive work behavior (CWB). One stream of literature deems cyberloafing to be bad for organizations and their employees, while another suggests cyberloafing is a coping response to stressful work events. Our work contributes to the latter stream of literature. The key objective of our study is to examine whether cyberloafing could be a means to cope with a stressful work event-abusive supervision, and if yes, what mediating and boundary conditions are involved. For this investigation, the authors leveraged the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory which posits that individuals engage in CWB to cope with the negative affect generated by the stressors and that this relationship is moderated at the first stage by personality traits.

Using a multi-wave survey design, the authors collected data from 357 employees working in an Indian IT firm. Results revealed support for three out of the four hypotheses.

Based on the Stressor-Emotion-CWB theory, the authors found that work-related negative affect fully mediated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing, and work locus of control (WLOC) moderated the positive relationship between abusive supervision and work-related negative affect. The authors did not find any evidence of a direct relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing. Also, the positive indirect relationship between abusive supervision and cyberloafing through work-related negative affect was moderated at the first stage by the WLOC such that the indirect effect was stronger (weaker) at high (low) levels of WLOC.

This work demonstrates that cyberloafing could be a way for employees to cope with their abusive supervisors.