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Online knowledge communities have emerged as crucial places for knowledge and risk management in the face of systemic risks. The vitality of online knowledge communities requires users’ active engagement. This research paper aims to explore how text complex level and text analytic level as effective risk knowledge design leverages encourage users’ engagement under different “riskification” levels.

This paper performs linguistic analysis on 210 TED talk transcripts and 38,377 comments from 2002 to 2018. The authors construct the variable of text complex level and conduct ordinary least squares regressions to test the relationships among text complex level, text analytic level and user engagement under different levels of “riskification” in the online knowledge community.

High text complex level decreases engagement, while high text analytic level increases engagement. A high level of “riskification” exaggerates the negative effect of text complex level but diminishes the positive effect of the text analytic level.

This research advances knowledge management by highlighting users’ engagement and responding to shared risk knowledge from a different perspective than knowledge supply. The focus on risk communication in online knowledge communities broadens the scope of knowledge management literature beyond the confines of organizations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is among the first studies to propose risk knowledge design approaches for communicating systemic risks.

In the digital era, business-to-business (B2B) salespersons are encouraged to communicate with buyers on social media platforms and shape customer loyalty. However, the effect of social media usage and its mechanism remain unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how salespersons’ social media usage influences B2B buyers’ trust beliefs and purchase risk, and therefore, customer loyalty.

The authors conduct an online-survey, use partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze the data, and adopt SPSS PROCESS macro 2.13 to test mediation effects.

Salespersons’ social media usage can enhance buyers’ trust beliefs on salespersons’ ability, integrity and benevolence, but only the latter two can improve customer loyalty. Social media usage does not directly affect purchase risk, and only benevolence can reduce purchase risk. Serial mediation models reveal that the effect of social media usage on customer loyalty is mediated by buyers’ trust beliefs on salespersons’ integrity/benevolence and purchase risk.

First, the authors confirm the effect of social media usage on customer loyalty in B2B context and refute the fallacy of social media uselessness in B2B practices. Second, the research shows that buyers’ trusting beliefs on salesperson’s ability and integrity do not significantly influence perceived risk. The finding is different from the stereotypical judgment in B2C scenarios. Third, the authors distinguish differently weighted influences of buyers’ trusting beliefs on salesperson’s ability, integrity and benevolence, and highlight the role of salespersons’ altruism attributes in shaping customer loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a chromium‐free conversion coating treatment for magnesium with phytic acid solution.

Pure magnesium was selected for the tests. Phytic acid solution was used as the conversion solution of surface treatment. The samples of magnesium were immersed in the solution under certain conditions to form a conversion coating on the surface of magnesium. The formation process of phytic acid conversion coating was studied by detecting the open circuit potential (OCP) and weight change of the pure magnesium for different conversion treatment times. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron energy spectrum (EDS) were used to examine the morphologies and compositions of the coatings, respectively.

The experimental results showed that the conversion coating had a multideck structure with netlike morphology, which is similar in nature to chromate conversion coatings, and was composed mainly of Mg, P, O and C. The contents of C and P and the size of the cracks in different conversion layers decreased from the external layer to the inner layer. The thickness of the conversion coating varied from 1.0μm to 15μm according to the processing parameters. The hydroxyl groups and phosphate carboxyl groups in the coating, which have similar properties to an organic paint coat, are beneficial to the combination of substrate and organic paint coating. The formation mechanism and thickness variation of the conversion coatings also are discussed.

The paper shows that phytic acid conversion coating could improve the electrochemical properties of magnesium and provide effective protection, which can improve the corrosion resistance of magnesium.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of different factors on mud performance, find the best conditions and synthesize a new type of anti-collapse drilling polymer mud with higher stability. The anti-collapse mechanism of drilling polymer mud was also suggested.

Exploring the influence of different molecular weight thickeners, filtrate reducers, soda ash addition and film-forming components on the mud performance, so as to obtain the best ratio of anti-collapse drilling polymer mud.

The results show that the use of vegetable glue, sulfonate copolymer and vegetable fiber powder can synthesize a high-viscosity, high-stability, collapse-resistant mud. When the mass ratio of vegetable fiber powder: vegetable glue: sulfonate copolymer is 40:1:2, the mud viscosity is 21.2 s, the fluid loss in 30 min is only 12.5 mL, and the mud film thickness is 1.5 mm, which is one ideal anti-collapse polymer mud.

Compared with ordinary polymer mud and bentonite mud, this anti-collapse polymer mud not only uses vegetable glue instead of traditional tackifiers but also effectively uses vegetable fiber powder produced from waste wood, which is environmentally friendly and highly stable specialty. It can effectively improve the safety and quality of construction during drilling in water-sensitive geology.

Several manufacturing firms are facing various internal concerns such as financial and operational issues, which strongly pushed the firms to search for solutions (e.g. supply chain finance; SCF) to sustain their supply chain operations and supply chain effectiveness (SCE). In this view, this study attempts to explore four key factors influencing the adoption of SCF, which, in turn, impacts SCE in Chinese manufacturing firms. Therefore, this study aims to propose that how information sharing, external collaboration, digitization and financial institutions enable manufacturing firms’ to adopt SCF that subsequently enhances SCE. Moreover, how supply chain risk (SCR) mediates the association between SCF adoption and SCE.

The current research recruited 177 Chinese manufacturing firms administrating a questionnaire to supply chain managers and tested the proposed conceptual model and associations using structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that all four factors are positively related to the adoption of SCF, which consequently improves the SCE of manufacturing firms. Moreover, the findings show that the effect of SCF significantly and positively impact SCE. Further, the result also confirmed that SCF significantly mitigates SCR, thereby leads to improves SCE.

The current study mainly focuses on Chinese manufacturing firms, which may generate low generalizability. In addition, this study was based on a cross-sectional research design which may generate common method bias. Therefore, more comparative studies are needed between developed and developing countries to enhance the generalizability of the study findings.

This study provides significant new insights about how marketing managers and practitioners can adopt SCF in manufacturing firms via information sharing, external collaboration, digitization and financial institutions to mitigate firm risk and enhance SCE.

The approach used in this research differs from many of the previous studies and investigates the factors of adoption of SCF and their impact on SCE in the manufacturing firm sector within the context of the Chinese economy. Therefore, this research is an important guide for scholars, managers and executives of marketing, while providing them with a new model, significant insights which are significant in their organizations.

Due to globalization, textile small and medium enterprises (SMEs) operations have become complex which raised the needs of risk-free financing solutions to support the SMEs’ daily processes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of supply chain (SC) finance, a risk-free financing solution, on SC effectiveness (SCE) in the context of textile SMEs by employing transaction cost (TC) approach.

The participants of the study were recruited from textile SMEs through a structured questionnaire. The proposed model and structural relationships were assessed by employing AMOS 24.0.

The results of this paper indicate that supply chain finance (SCF) has a significant effect on SCE. Furthermore, all proposed factors of SCF adoption have a positive and significant effect on SCF.

This study helps the SMEs executives or owners to adopt SCF as a secure financing scheme to reduce the credit TCs, optimize the firm working capital, reduce the risk of default, and improve SC effectiveness. SMEs and suppliers can build strong relationships while adopting the findings of this study. SMEs can engage the suppliers to work under strategic alliance through negotiation, collaboration, and work digitization, and extend their payment terms while providing an opportunity to the suppliers to get their payment back before a fixed time through discounting from financial institutions as needed.

The present study covered the gap related to SCF and SCE by identifying unique factors of SCF adoption which was ignored in the previous literature by employing TC approach.