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Hand gesture-based interaction can provide far more intuitive, natural and immersive feelings for users to manipulate 3D objects for virtual assembly (VA). A mechanical assembly consists of mostly general-purpose machine elements or mechanical parts that can be defined into four types based on their geometric features and functionalities. For different types of machine elements, engineers formulate corresponding grasping gestures based on their domain knowledge or customs for ease of assembly. Therefore, this paper aims to support a virtual hand to assemble mechanical parts.

It proposes a novel glove-based virtual hand grasping approach for virtual mechanical assembly. The kinematic model of virtual hand is set up first by analyzing the hand structure and possible movements, and then four types of grasping gestures are defined with joint angles of fingers for connectors and three types of parts, respectively. The recognition of virtual hand grasping is developed based on collision detection and gesture matching. Moreover, stable grasping conditions are discussed.

A prototype system is designed and developed to implement the proposed approach. The case study on VA of a two-stage gear reducer demonstrates the functionality of the system. From the users’ feedback, it is found that more natural and stable hand grasping interaction for VA of mechanical parts can be achieved.

It proposes a novel glove-based virtual hand grasping approach for virtual mechanical assembly.

Purpose – Investigate the causes and consequences of foreign financial institutions' divestments in China's banking sector which is an example of cross-border transactions by institutional investors.

Methodology – Use a sample of 26 foreign financial institutions' strategic investments in Chinese banks. Ten of those investments are divested after the global financial crisis. We investigate determinants of the divestment, business cooperation after the divestment, and Chinese banks' stock price reactions to the divestment announcement.

Findings – The poor performance of foreign financial institutions, which is attributable to the global financial crisis, and the institutions' regulated low equity ownership are important causes of divestment (or whole divestment). In contrast, Chinese banks' poor performance does not cause foreign divestments. Foreign financial institutions that fully divest their equity stakes usually terminate their cooperative business, which was required by the strategic investment agreement. The Bank of China and the China Construction Bank, which experienced large H-share divestments, experienced large economic declines in A-share values.

Social implications – Foreign financial institutions' strategic investments created substantial shareholder value before the divestment. Banking sector developments that rely on foreign investments are vulnerable to economic downturns in developed countries.

Originality/value of paper – To the best of our knowledge, this is the first trial to analyze the impact of divestments on divested bank performance.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically study the research and development history of suspicious transaction reporting (STR) system in China, and introduce the core elements in constructing an intelligent surveillance system which could provide a solution to the situation of low effectiveness and efficiency in Chinese Financial Institutions (FIs) STR procedure nowadays. The solution outputs those falling out of the normal customer behavior profiles instead of only extracting data by the rules issued by authorities.

This paper reviews the latest literature, regulations and guidelines of STR gathered domestically and overseas, and hands out questionnaire surveys to hundreds of software vendors, regulators and FIs, details the current situation of poor deployment of intelligent in China and tells the difficulties of subjective STR decision procedures.

Few Chinese FIs have deployed real intelligent STR systems, most are using rule-based filtering systems conformed to the objective STR supervisory regulations. To change the embarrassing situation, the regulators have tried to introduce self-regulatory mode which allows the FIs to define STR decision procedures themselves. Limited by the FIs’ ability of information sharing and investigation scope, FIs could hardly unveil the whole schema of a money laundering organization. The pursuant objective FIs can reach is to construct a system that could tell what the normal customer behaviors look like and extract all those falling out of the system’s expectations as suspicious activities.

Only the core elements of the total intelligent STR system are discussed, that is, what, why and how about the customer behavior pattern recognition system. Besides this, a total solution should also use a watch list, reporting decision, cases management, risk control, etc.

This paper for the first time argues that the orientation of regulatory rules in China has actually hindered the spreading of really effective intelligent system for these years. The author creatively puts forward a solution to the difficult problem for FIs to spot criminal schema directly, instead the FIs should only be required to determine whether the transactions carrying out currently are falling within the expected behavior pattern scopes, which is under the FIs’ capabilities due to the internationally accepted obligations of “Know Your Customer”.

Institutional investors have increasingly gained importance since the early 1990s. The assets under management in these funds have increased threefold since 1990 to reach more than US$45 trillion in 2005, including over US$20 trillion in equity (Ferreira & Matos, 2008). Further, the value of institutional investors' assets represents roughly 162.6% of the OECD gross domestic product in 2005 (Gonnard, Kim, & Ynesta, 2008). Given the magnitude of institutional investors' holdings relative to the world market capitalization, challenging questions on the economic role of these investors have been raised. One such question concerns their impact on the stability of stock markets. On the one hand, active strategies of buying and selling shares by these investors may contribute to moving stock prices away from their fundamental values. On the other hand, if all institutional investors react to the same information in a timely manner, they are in fact helping to increase market efficiency by speeding up the adjustment of prices to new fundamentals (for competing theories on the role of institutional investors, see, e.g., Lakonishok, Shleifer, & Vishny, 1992). This view of institutional investors as “efficiency drivers” generated considerable debate for many years (see, e.g., Ferreira & Laux, 2007; French & Roll, 1986).

This paper aims to identify important factors in green public procurement (GPP) implementation and then to clarify how these factors affect GPP implementation.

The authors applied the Delphi method first and then conducted a focused and constrained multiple case study at 18 government procurement centers across China.

The authors identified four clusters of factors for successful GPP implementation: more clear, consistent and operational policy goals; a nation-wide green procurement campaign to enhance social capital and cultural resources; promoting staff’s ethics, professionalism, capacity and knowledge; and establishing checks and balances among organizations involved in the whole purchasing process.

GPP can significantly improve environmental protection and sustainable development.

Based on key insights from systems theory and agency theory, the authors emphasize that GPP implementation must take down its own functional silos and adopt a process approach across organizational tiers to synchronize human resource based and inter-organizational capabilities into a unified whole through information sharing, communications and collaboration.

This paper aims to describe a three-dimensional mathematical and numerical model based on finite volume method to simulate the fluid dynamics in weld pool, droplet transfer and keyhole behaviors in the laser-MIG hybrid welding process of Fe36Ni Invar alloy.

Double-ellipsoidal heat source model and adaptive Gauss rotary body heat source model were used to describe electric arc and laser beam heat source, respectively. Besides, recoil pressure, electromagnetic force, Marangoni force, buoyancy as well as liquid material flow through a porous medium and the heat, mass, momentum transfer because of droplets were taken into consideration in the computational model.

The results of computer simulation, including temperature field in welded plate and velocity field in the fusion zone were presented in this article on the basis of the solution of mass, momentum and energy conservation equations. The correctness of elaborated models was validated by experimental results and this proposed model exhibited close correspondence with the experimental results with respect to weld geometry.

It lays foundation for understanding the physical phenomena accompanying hybrid welding and optimizing the process parameters for laser-MIG hybrid welding of Invar alloy.

The existing research rarely explains the value of authoritarian leadership in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of this study is to explore how authoritarian leadership facilitates employee followership behaviors of the SMEs in China by considering the moderating effects of cooperative goal interdependence and leader behavioral integrity.

This research tested hypotheses with a two-wave survey from a sample of 258 respondents from SMEs in China. Hypotheses are tested using hierarchical regression analyses.

Findings of the study have indicated the instrumental function of authoritarian leadership in facilitating employee followership behavior in SMEs. In particular, this study shows that the influence of authoritarian leadership on followership behavior was positively related when employees have high cooperative goal interdependence with authoritarian leaders, and when employees perceive a leader's high behavioral integrity.

The study will help SMEs to understand that authoritarian leadership should seek optimal levels of cooperative goals with employees and integrate achievement goals into their career development strategy to enhance their followership behavior. In addition, authoritarian leadership should strive to take actions consistent with their words to guarantee the relationship between achieving goals and sharing mutual goals with employees.

The study contributes to the literature by addressing an important yet under-researched area, i.e. the effectiveness of authoritarian leadership in SMEs. Authoritarian leadership, a demanding and controlling leadership style, is often criticized by scholars. This study elaborates on a three-way interaction implied by self-determination theory in predicting followership behavior. It specifies the different roles of two situational factors (cooperative goal interdependence and leader behavior integrity) in affecting employees' followership behavior.

This paper aims to investigate effect of porous polystyrene microspheres encapsulated inhibitor on the protection performance of epoxy resin coating.

Porous polystyrene (PS) microspheres were synthesized by soap-free emulsion polymerization. The morphology of microspheres was observed by scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Corrosion inhibitor benzotriazole was encapsulated into porous PS microspheres. The protection performance of epoxy resin coating with different contents of PS microspheres was tested by polarization curve.

The findings of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and scanning vibrating electrode technique showed that addition of corrosion inhibitor to porous PS microspheres further improved the protection performance of the coatings.

Porous PS microspheres could be used as nanocontainer to encapsulate corrosion inhibitor.

Addition of porous PS microspheres with corrosion inhibitor improved the protection performance of the coatings.

The purpose of this paper is to study China's strategy of purchasing resource commodities in international markets, what the Chinese government can do to change the current disorderly import system and how China can build purchase alliances to win in international bargaining.

A narrative inquiry is used to analyze China's strategy of purchasing resource commodities in international markets, and a game theory model is employed to study different manufacturers’ attitudes toward united negotiation and purchase alliances and the influence of government regulation on their attitude.

The paper finds that the “paradox of China's great market” in importing resource commodities is due to the constant increase of China's demand and China's disorderly import system. Government regulation will influence manufacturers’ attitudes toward united negotiation and purchase alliances. Purchase alliances may be the only effective strategy that can help China avoid price risk in international markets, because Chinese corporations cannot control foreign mines and the Chinese futures market cannot mature in a limited, short period.

The analysis in the paper lacks sufficient theory and experiences. The game theory model is very simple and is not directly linked with purchase alliances. Owing to literature constraints, there are few foreign experiences about building purchase alliances.

This paper advises the Chinese government and corporations what to do about the high import price of resource commodities and how to build purchase alliances to win in international bargaining, for example improving import regulations, recomposing the united negotiation group, forming a responsibility system and so on.

The paper forms an integrated agenda for China to build purchase alliances for importing resource commodities, and most policies could be carried out by the Chinese government immediately.