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This study aims to elaborate on the microencapsulation of the plant extract (PE, from Camellia sinensis leaf, clover flower and cocoa flower) and the preparation of a slow-release lining fabric loading the PE microcapsule.

PE was microencapsulated into polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) shells through interfacial polymerization. The morphology, thermal stability, slow-release property and drug loading ratio of the PVA/PE microcapsules were characterized to ensure the availability in coating finishing. To find the optimum parameters, the composite fabrics were prepared from non-woven fabrics coated by calcium alginate hydrogel, which glued mass fractions of microcapsules and dried in different ways. To evaluate the effectiveness, a lipase enzyme activity test was conducted.

Under optimal conditions, the PVA/PE microcapsules with smooth surface have an average particle size of 14.5 um, and they are expected to reach a loading ratio of 38.5 per cent while remaining stable under 220°C. Given a microcapsule of 4 per cent (of the mass), the composite fabric has a good hand feeling, being prepared through calcium chloride coating. It is shown that the inhibition ratios of the microcapsules and composite fabrics on lipase are 31.3 and 21.0 per cent, respectively.

The composite fabric could be prepared through the other finishing methods such as padding and printing. In addition, the release mechanism of the composite could be studied.

This study provided a simple and effective way to prolong the duration of PE. This way was conductive to protect environmental sensitive PEs from being destroyed in compositing processes.

Preparing composite fabrics for transdermal delivery system was novel and other kind of plant extracts could be used in this way.

This case discusses Qihoo 360's free business model, how it used this free model to overpower competitors, and how the model evolved over time. Qihoo 360 is a company that took just six years to become a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (with a market value of over US$ 2 billion). At Qihoo 360's Initial Public Offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Qihoo's founder Zhou Hongyi reflected on how Qihoo's free business model had brought its current success and speculates on its future challenges.

The authors used both secondary data and field interviews when preparing this case. After reading through various company reports, competitor information, and financial filings, the authors interviewed five top manager team (TMT) members of Qihoo 360, three TMT members of its competitors, and two partners of venture capital investors who have invested in these companies in Beijing or Shenzhen during the last three years. The authors collected 347 media reports related to these companies in Chinese covering seven years of history. This long span of data collection improves the interpretation of the company and helps construct the storyline of the case.

This case is suitable for an MBA course or an advanced undergraduate course in strategic management or a technology-oriented entrepreneurship course, focussing on the topic of the free business model, business model innovation, disruptive innovation, and evolution of the business model during the entrepreneurial process.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a broadened and integrated red team strategy with concrete steps to help companies better deal with the disruptive forces prevalent in the world today and turn disruptions into growth.

This paper synthesizes and builds on previous research and relevant business cases accumulated through our research and executive teaching experience. The authors offer a broadened and integrated red team strategy with practical guidance for business executives

The authors provide four key steps to help companies implement the red team strategy: create a red team culture and encourage diverse perspectives; establish an independent red team to overcome organizational inertia; use the red team to embrace disruption and growth opportunities; and take a milestone approach to red team execution and resource allocation.

More research on red team strategy is needed to delve into the underlying factors and delineate the boundary conditions for specific details in this strategy and implementation.

The red team strategy provides concrete steps to help companies in their efforts to adapt to and capitalize on disruptive forces.

The red team strategy extends the concept and application of red teams and integrates previously fragmented ideas and practices into a systematic model with simple steps, which make it easier for companies to cope with disruption.

How do entrepreneurs use simple rules to build their business models? Based on an inductive study of three Chinese Internet and technology firms, the authors find that business models emerge from simple rules that entrepreneurs learn from their experience. Simple rules also guide entrepreneurs to actualize and exploit opportunities in the marketplace, and they can help business models evolve through market feedback, especially in internationalization. This paper aims to delve into the black box of entrepreneurial decision-making and offer a better depiction of the business model development process in uncertain and fast-changing environments and thus provide guidance for future entrepreneurs.

Following the case method (Eisenhardt, 1989; Yin, 2003), the authors first present a thick description of characteristics of three companies and the dynamics of their business models. They then code these descriptions into first-order measures. Finally, they aggregate these measures into abstract constructs. They constantly compare the theoretical constructs and the emerging theory with the existing literature on business models.

The authors generate three key insights from the findings: business models emerge from simple rules learned from entrepreneurs’ experience, simple rules help entrepreneurs exploit and actualize opportunities in the marketplace and simple rules help businesses expand and evolve business models through market feedback, especially in internationalization.

This paper falls into the intersection of strategy and entrepreneurship – an emerging new field of strategic entrepreneurship – and is concerned with how businesses create and sustain a competitive advantage while simultaneously identifying and exploiting new opportunities. The authors bring people – the individual decision-makers for businesses – back in strategy research and depict a more realistic picture of the behavior of successful entrepreneurs and their business model development process.

How do different corporate governance structures fare under conditions of fundamental environmental transformations? Treating governance structure as a knowledge distribution mechanism embedded in institutional frameworks, the paper aims to propose that the efficiency of this knowledge diffusing process will increase organizational survival under a punctuational change.

Using the case of Chinese banking industry during 1897-1927, a period of rapid technological, economic, and regulatory shifts.

Money shops (qianzhuang) with decentralized, open and extended governance structure were better able to adapt to rapid changes in the environment and had a higher survival chance than ticket stores (piaohao) with centralized, closed and internalized governance structure.

When exogenous shocks dramatically change the environment, decentralized, open and extended governance structures can more easily discover new habitats in which a modified form of organization can thrive.

By examining the Chinese banking industry during the fundamental shift of the environment at the turn of the twentieth century, this paper sheds new wisdom on the understanding of the current turbulent world and helps us discover new solutions to cope with the institutional transition necessary to survive and prosper in the new world environment and pave the road ahead.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the influence of different aspects of top management team (TMT) functional background on short-term performance, long-term performance, innovation performance and oversea performance separately. This research aims to verify whether the social categorization theory and information and decision-making theory are applicable in listed companies of China’s information technology (IT) industry so as to provide key theoretical references for TMT enhancement ad corporate performance improvement.

This paper takes A-share listed companies in Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange as its study subjects, and it chooses the data from 2004 to 2010 in all of the 105 companies in IT industry in terms of the classification of Wind Database. The stepwise multiple regressions were run utilizing the regression program in Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS).

The research results show that the social categorization theory can better explain TMT’s influence on corporate performance. TMT functional heterogeneity does not contribute to improving corporate performance and shows significant negative influence on short-term performance and innovation performance in particular. Among the three basic functional backgrounds, TMTs dominated by “throughput” backgrounds show significant positive influence on short-term performance, long-term performance, innovation performance and overseas performance, and the influence turns out to be the largest among these three backgrounds. In terms of the three special professional experiences, top executives with overseas backgrounds have significant positive influence on all of short-term, long-term, innovation and overseas performances. Externally hired executives, however, would impede corporate innovation development, while those with government background would increase corporate overseas performance.

This paper analyzes the relationship between TMT functional background and corporate performance in a comprehensive way for the first time and then takes the lead in considering the dynamics and complexity of corporate performance as well as discussing the influence of TMT functional background on four corporate performances. This study not only supports the effect that the social categorization theory has on TMTs but also offers some inspirations on the development of China’s IT companies.

This study aims to investigate the compositional characteristics of aromatic hydrocarbons extracted from coals and to describe how the sulfur content influences the properties of coals and whether widely accepted maturity parameters are suitable for medium- to high-sulfur coal.

Four samples of medium- to high-sulfur coal were obtained from Fenxi, Shanxi Province, and studied using gas chromatography and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

The GC-MS results showed that there were five series of compounds were identified in the aromatic fractions: naphthalenes, phenanthrenes, oxygen-containing compounds, biphenyls and sulfur-containing compounds. The substituent group was mainly methyl. The content of dibenzothiophenes was high, which was attributed to their high thermodynamic stability. The presence of sulfur reduced the content of oxygen-containing compounds. A depositional environment that facilitated the formation of organic sulfur compounds led to a higher content of naphthalenes.

The development of methods for removing organic sulfur compounds would benefit from a study of their nature, which would be important for improving the use of coal.

Hazard assessment on drought disaster is of great significance for improving drought risk management. Due to the complexity and uncertainty of the drought disaster, the index values have some grey multi-source heterogeneous characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to construct a grey projection incidence model (GPIM) to evaluate the hazard of the drought disaster characterised by the grey heterogeneity information.

First, the index system of the drought hazard risk is established based on the formation mechanism of the drought disaster. Then, the GPIM for the heterogeneous panel data is constructed to assess drought hazard of five cities in Henan Province. Subsequently, based on the assessment results, the grey clustering model is employed for the regional division.

The findings demonstrate that five cities in central Henan Province are divided into three categories, which correspond to three different risk grades, respectively. With respect to different drought risk areas, corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are proposed.

This paper provides a practical and effective new method for the hazard assessment on drought disaster. Meanwhile, these countermeasures and suggestions can help policy makers to improve the efficiency of drought resistance work and reduce the losses caused by drought disasters in Henan Province.

This paper proposes a new GPIM which resolves the assessment problems of the uncertain systems with grey heterogeneous information, such as real numbers, interval grey numbers and three-parameter interval grey numbers. It not only expands the application scope of the grey incidence model, but also enriches the research of panel data.

With the current rise of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging economies (EE), more attention is now being directed to EE MNEs and what drives the internationalization of these companies. In this article we aim to provide more insights into the strategies and development of EE MNEs by conducting an in‐depth study of a Chinese high‐tech company in the communications equipment industry: Huawei. Our case study proposes that EE MNEs (1) tend to nurture their capability in the domestic market as a base before internationalization; (2) prefer to enter markets with fewer barriers in cultural, technological, economic, and institutional distances to accumulate experience and move up the value curve; and (3) use inward and outward linkages to complement their strengths and offset their weaknesses in the global market. Our study on the internationalization patterns of EE MNEs enriches and broadens current MNE theory.

The literature reports inconsistent findings about the effects of social media usage (SMU). Researchers distinguish between active and passive social media usage (ASMU and PSMU), which can generate different effects on users by social support and social comparison mechanisms, respectively. Drawing on social presence theory (SPT), this study integrates an implicit social presence mechanism with the above two mechanisms to explicate the links between SMU and seniors' loneliness.

Data were collected from a field study by interviewing seniors living in eight aging care communities in China. Loneliness, social media activities and experiences with social media in terms of online social support (OSS), upward social comparison (USC) and social presence (SP) were assessed. Factor-based structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data.

OSS can mediate the relationship between ASMU and seniors' loneliness. Moreover, SP mediates between ASMU, PSMU, and seniors' loneliness, and between OSS, USC and seniors' loneliness. OSS mediates the relationship between ASMU and SP, and USC mediates the relationship between PSMU and SP.

This study shows that social media can alleviate seniors' loneliness, which could help relieve the pressures faced by health and social care systems. Social presence features are suggested to help older users interact with social health technologies in socially meaningful ways.

This study not only demonstrates that SP can play a crucial role in the relationship between both ASMU and PSMU and loneliness, but also unravels the links between SP and OSS, as well as USC.