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The purpose of this paper is to understand the natural wind field characteristics of the tunnel entrance section and analyzing the aerodynamic performance of high-speed railway trains (HSRTs) under natural winds.

Three typical tunnel entrance section sites, namely, tunnel–bridge in a dry canyon (TBDC), tunnel–bridge in a river canyon (TBRC) and tunnel–flat ground (TF), are selected to conduct a continuous wind field measurement. Based on the measured wind characteristics, the natural winds of the TBDC and TF sites are reconstituted and imported into the two corresponding full-scale computational fluid dynamics models. The aerodynamic loads of the HSRT running on TBDC and TF with reconstituted winds are simply analyzed.

The von Kármán spectrum can be used to describe the wind field at the tunnel entrance section. In the reconstituted natural wind condition, a time-varying feature of wind speed distribution and leeward side vortex around the HSRT caused by the wind speed fluctuation is found. The fluctuating amplitude of aerodynamic loads at the TBDC infrastructure is up to 97.9% larger than that at the TF infrastructure.

The natural wind characteristics at tunnel entrance sections on the high-speed railway are first measured and analyzed. A numerical reconstitution scheme considering the temporal and spatial variation of natural wind speed is proposed and verified based on field measurement results. The aerodynamic performance of an HSRT under reconstituted natural winds is first investigated.

Nested within institutional theory and the political economy perspective, this study aims to examine Chinese outward foreign direct investments (OFDI)-supporting organizations and fostering mechanisms for its SMEs in Europe’s largest economy, Germany.

The authors conduct a multiple-case study to present rich insights from elite interviews with representatives of Chinese and German governmental organizations, intermediary parties and specialized OFDI consultants. In addition, the authors analyze secondary data such as presentations, websites, brochures, social media and recent Chinese OFDI policies for SMEs. The findings are triangulated by interviewing business owners and senior executives of seven Chinese SMEs that have invested in Germany.

Cooperating with Germany’s federal government, China’s ministries implemented an effective OFDI support network in Germany, which connects and benefits both economies. This includes Chinese governmental organizations, privately-held national champions, German–Chinese business associations and linked intermediary parties. These organizations support SMEs through four main mechanisms: networking and information, mutually beneficial knowledge transfer between innovation partners, lobbying for potential cooperation and an objective picture of Chinese OFDI and facilitating investment services.

This study advances OFDI theory and contributes to the growing discussion on the internationalization of Chinese SMEs by shedding light on China’s OFDI support organizations and mechanisms in the German market. The study also offers practical contributions. Understanding better how governments can spur internationalization is vital, as it determines the effectiveness of policymaking and fosters international mutual understanding, cultural exchange and firm growth and innovation (Ahlstrom, 2010), and hence ultimately contributes positively to society. Moreover, knowing the specific OFDI support organizations and measures China is currently adopting can serve as a helpful orientation for Chinese entrepreneurs who plan to invest in Germany.

This study investigates the way in which acquisition-related human factors affect knowledge transfer in the context of Chinese cross-border M&A for strategic assets. The authors find that the process of knowledge transfer is reciprocal for revenue and cost synergies, including explicit and tacit knowledge. The establishment of joint ventures (JV) in China after the takeover boosts product-oriented knowledge transfer from overseas-acquired firms in mature markets to Chinese acquirers. The promotion of overseas synergies stimulates complementary knowledge transfer flow, which is reversely transferred from Chinese acquirers to overseas-acquired subsidiaries such as low-saving sourcing and new market applications. This study identifies three acquisition-related human factors that impact overseas knowledge senders for knowledge transfer. These human factors are implemented by Chinese strategic investors as new shareholders during the loosen integration phase. The first facilitator is all-round communication programs with top management involvement, aiming to build up constructive communication channels to boost knowledge transfer. The second facilitator is competence-based trust, which stimulates cooperation and application based on similar professional competence between Chinese acquirers and their overseas-acquired subsidiaries. The impeder is a high turnover of key skilled workers at Chinese acquirers to undermine the effectiveness of knowledge transfer.

Grey modeling technique is an important element of grey system theory, and academic articles applied to agricultural science research have been published since 1985, proving the broad applicability and effectiveness of the technique from different aspects and providing a new means to solve agricultural science problems. The analysis of the connotation and trend of the application of grey modeling technique in agricultural science research contributes to the enrichment of grey technique and the development of agricultural science in multiple dimensions.

Based on the relevant literature selected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Web of Science, SpiScholar and other databases in the past 37 years (1985–2021), this paper firstly applied the bibliometric method to quantitatively visualize and systematically analyze the trend of publication, productive author, productive institution, and highly cited literature. Then, the literature is combed by the application of different grey modeling techniques in agricultural science research, and the literature research progress is systematically analyzed.

The results show that grey model technology has broad prospects in the field of agricultural science research. Agricultural universities and research institutes are the main research forces in the application of grey model technology in agricultural science research, and have certain inheritance. The application of grey model technology in agricultural science research has wide applicability and precise practicability.

By analyzing and summarizing the application trend of grey model technology in agricultural science research, the research hotspot, research frontier and valuable research directions of grey model technology in agricultural science research can be more clearly grasped.

In recent years, author and document citation and co-citation analyses have often been applied to map the “intellectual structure” of different scientific fields, including management and international business. However, the technique of bibliographic coupling between scientific documents, which seeks to identify active research fronts in a scientific field or discipline, has been less commonly used. This study utilized this technique to identify and visualize the research fronts in the context of papers on emerging markets multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) recently published in a wide variety of journals. The aim is not only to complement and expand the results obtained in prior studies that have used other types of systematization, such as qualitative content analysis methodology but also to propose avenues for future research.

The primary databases utilized to carry out the present research work – both comprised in the Web of Science™ (WoS) Core Collection – were: the Social Sciences Citation Index® (SCI) developed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) and the Emerging Sources Citation Index. A total of 496 “peer-reviewed journal articles” published between 2014 and December 30, 2019 were retrieved. With regards to the methodology, bibliometric methods were utilized, as well as social network analysis (SNA).

Particularly, the analytical techniques employed – adopting a “quantitative” method of a deductive character – allowed the identification of the most active research “fronts” in international research related to the topic under analysis: the phenomenon of EM-MNEs.

The present study has several limitations resulting from the utilization of bibliometric methods applied in the analyses performed.

The authors believe that this research is of value for future researchers since it allows the identification of research “fronts,” which shape the vanguard of knowledge and reveal current trends and future directions in the area under examination.

Outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from emerging economies, in particular from China and India, is on the rise. As a result, the international expansion of emerging-market multinational enterprises (MNEs) is attracting growing attention among scholars. However, existing research comparing the location patterns of Chinese and Indian MNEs is still scant. In order to fill this gap, we aim to analyze the impact of political risk and cultural distance on the location choice of Chinese and Indian MNEs. Drawing on an institutional approach, we propose several hypotheses regarding the influence of political risk and cultural distance on location decisions. We test our hypotheses using a sample of FDIs carried out by Chinese and Indian MNEs. Our findings suggest that the behavior of Chinese MNEs is less conventional than that of their Indian counterparts when facing institutional obstacles in host countries. Previous papers dealing with location decisions of China’s and India’s outward FDI did not specifically address the impact of political risk and cultural distance. This comparative study provides new empirical evidence on the influence of these traditional host country institutional factors.

As an effective tool to promote rational resource allocation and facilitate the development of green management practices such as enterprise digital innovation, the green credit policy has recently gained extensive attention. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between green credit policies and the digital innovation of enterprises, and to further explore the mechanism of action between them and their boundary conditions.

Based on micro-level data on Chinese firms from 2007 to 2019, this paper constructs a difference-in-differences (DID) model to investigate the impact and intrinsic mechanisms of green credit policies on firms' digital innovation and its boundary conditions, with the help of a quasi-natural experiment, i.e. the Green Credit Guidelines.

Green credit policies inhibit digital innovation and fail to compensate for innovation. The analysis of the mechanism shows that the implementation of green credit policies has a negative impact on digital innovation by increasing the financing constraints faced by firms, and has also a crowding-out effect on R&D investment, resulting in a disincentive to digital innovation. Further analysis reveals that the negative impact of green credit policies on digital innovation is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, enterprises without financially experienced executives, and in the eastern regions of China.

This study provides empirical evidence to understand the effectiveness and mechanism of influence of green credit policies on enterprise digital innovation, providing also a basis to further improve green credit policies.

As an effective mode to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) raise working capital, supply chain finance has recently gained extensive attention. The purpose of this paper is to explore the intrinsic mechanism of how both weak and strong ties in the supply chain network impact the supply chain financing performance (SCFP) of SMEs from the perspective of the supply chain network.

Based on the extended resource-based perspective, this paper proposes a theoretical model to explain the mode in which strong ties and weak ties of SMEs in the supply chain network influence SCFP through both physical distribution flexibility and demand management flexibility. Based on data from 182 manufacturing firms in China, this paper uses multiple regression analysis to test hypotheses.

The results of this paper indicate that weak ties improve SCFP more effectively than strong ties. Furthermore, both physical distribution flexibility and demand management flexibility exert different mediating roles either between strong ties and SCFP or between weak ties and SCFP. Moreover, the effect of physical distribution flexibility and demand management flexibility on SCFP of SMEs is not reinforced.

This paper highlights the importance to expand supply chain finance research from the perspective of the supply chain network. In particular, this paper explores the poorly understood mediating effect both physical distribution flexibility and demand management flexibility exert on the relationship between network ties and the SCFP of SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of the PRD geometric parameters, including the area and aspect ratio, on the discharge and force characteristics of pressure relief process under various plenum compartment pressures and Mach numbers.

Under various plenum compartment pressures and Mach numbers, the effect of the area and aspect ratio on the discharge and force characteristics of the PRD are numerically investigated via a three-dimensional steady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations solver based on structured grid technology.

When the aspect ratio remains constant, the discharge coefficient C_D, thrust coefficient C_T and moment coefficient C_M are not affected by the PRD. When the area is constant, the aspect ratio dramatically impacts the discharge and force characteristics because the aspect ratio increases, the discharge coefficient C_D of the PRD decreases, and the thrust coefficient C_T and the moment coefficient C_M both increase. When the aspect ratio is 2, the discharge coefficient C_D decreases by 14.7 per cent, the thrust coefficient C_T increases by 10-15 per cent, and the moment coefficient C_M increases by 10-23 per cent compared with when the aspect ratio is 1.

This study provides detailed data and conclusions for nacelle PRD researchers and actual engineering applications.

On the basis of considering the influence of operating conditions on the discharge and force characteristics of the nacelle PRD, the impact of geometric parameters, including the area and aspect ratio on the discharge and force characteristics is comprehensively considered.

This paper examines how weak ties and strong ties in the supply chain network influence the financing performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through the mediation of information sharing and innovation capability.

Questionnaires were administered to 208 financial managers responsible for supply chain finance in SMEs in China. Data analysis techniques used included multiple regression analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

The authors found that weak ties had a more substantial impact on the financing performance of SMEs than strong ties did. Information sharing and innovation capability played a mediating role between weak and strong ties and the financing performance of SMEs. In addition, information sharing and innovation capability complement each other and jointly influence the financing performance of SMEs.

SMEs are suggested to actively embed themselves in the supply chain network to increase financing opportunities and reduce financing costs. The authors also recommend SMEs to enhance the level of their information sharing in the supply chain network and take advantage of their network ties to access and adopt new technology from other organisations and conduct collaborative innovation with partner institutions.

The paper extends the authors’ understanding of supply chain finance by exploring the intrinsic mechanism of how various constructs (weak ties, strong ties, information sharing and innovation capability) in the supply chain network have an impact on the financing performance of SMEs. In particular, the authors explore the under-researched mediating effect of information sharing and innovation capability on the relationship between network ties and the financing performance of SMEs.