Search results

This study aims to focus on the optimal green R&D of a capital-constrained supply chain under different channel power structures as well as the impact of capital constraint, financing cost, channel power structure and cost-reducing efficiency on green R&D and supply chain profitability.

A two-echelon supply chain is considered. The upstream firm engages in green R&D but has capital constraints that can be overcome by external financing. Green R&D is beneficial to reduce production costs and increase consumer demand. Based on whether or not the upstream firm is capital constrained and dominates the supply chain, four models are developed.

Capital constraints significantly lower green R&D and supply chain profitability. Transferring leadership from the upstream to the downstream firms leads to higher green R&D levels and downstream firm profitability, whereas the upstream firm's profitability is increased (decreased) if green R&D investment efficiency is high (low) enough. Greater financing costs reduce green R&D and downstream firm profitability; however, the upstream firm's profitability under the model in which it functions as the follower increases if the initial capital is sufficient. More importantly, empirical analysis based on practice data is used to verify the theoretical results reported above.

This study reveals how upstream firms in supply chains decide green R&D decisions in situations with capital constraints, providing managers and governments with an understanding of the impact of capital constraint, channel power structure, financing cost and cost-reducing efficiency on supply chain green R&D and profitability.

The major contributions are the exploration of supply chain green R&D by taking into consideration channel power structures and cost-reducing efficiency and the validation of theoretical results using practice data.

This chapter explores the challenges for the application of the concept of disability to other categories of oppression utilized in the notion of intersectionality.

The concept of intersectionality argues that oppression occurs within the contexts of class, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. We raise questions about the applicability of intersectionality to persons with disabilities. Using a Symbolic Interactionist approach to understand the matrix of domination or subordination, we examine how well disability as a category of disadvantage applies to intersectionality.

We argue that the fluid, heterogeneous, and discordant status characteristics, physicality, and diagnostic ambiguity of disability present a considerable challenge for the application of intersectionality as a useful paradigm for disability studies. While several ascribed statuses may contribute to the oppression of persons with disabilities, disability itself offers many unique challenges to understanding the intersection of these traits in the lives of these same people.

The conceptual uniqueness of disability produces rather complex methodological circumstances for understanding the social identity of persons with disabilities who are simultaneously members of additional categories of oppression. These complex and challenging methodological issues can best be met qualitatively, i.e., by approaching disability as lived experience.

For students of intersectionality, this chapter offers a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the concept of disability as a category of oppression.

To suppress fatigue damage and ensure structural safety, this paper aims to analyze the effect of the damage accumulation on the aeroelastic model of an air-breathing hypersonic flight vehicle (AHFV).

Initially, by constructing the modified longitudinal elastic model of an AHFV, the stress condition of the fuselage is analyzed, and the model differences with the rigid body are studied. Then, a new damage dynamic model is presented to describe the damage dynamic evolution. Finally, combining the damage model and the longitudinal model of the AHFV, the key variables affecting the damage accumulation are determined.

It is demonstrated that the elastic deformation must be considered when analyzing the damage characteristics of the fuselage and to determine the key variables that affect the damage accumulation, which provides a more accurate reference for improving the structural reliability and lifespan of AHFVs.

The novelty of this paper comes from the application of the force and stress models for the damage evolution of the AHFV and the development of a new damage model for the entire body with the elastic dynamics of AHFVs.

The purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of top management team (TMT) team trust in examining the relationship between team processes (internal and external) and human resource management (HRM) decision performance (quality and satisfaction) in the context of the People’s Republic of China.

The sample data of this study include 524 team members from 76 TMTs in east China’s Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui provinces. IBM SPSS AMOS 22.0 software was employed for the data analysis.

The study finds that TMT internal and external processes have significant positive effects on HRM decision quality and satisfaction. The study further finds that TMT team trust partially mediates the relationship between TMT processes (internal and external processes) and HRM decision quality and satisfaction.

This research provides useful insights into the role of TMT team trust in enhancing managerial decision performance.

This study is among the limited studies that explore the influence of team trust in the relationship between TMT processes (internal and external processes) and HRM decision quality and satisfaction among TMTs in China. This study has extended TMT knowledge in mainstream management with guidelines on how to enhance organizational decision performance.

Using resource-based theory and social cognitive theory, this study aimed to investigate crucial resources that new US fashion ventures need to survive the initial stage of business development. It also intended to discover the role and characteristics of founders that contribute to the success of a fashion business, as well as challenges and struggles that fashion entrepreneurs face.

For the study, a qualitative research method with in-depth personal interviews was conducted. Participants were recruited through purposeful sampling methods. Using a grounded theory approach, we analyzed the approximately 308 pages of primary source data, transcribed from the records of the interviews.

Findings were categorized into three major themes. First, financial resources and literacy, marketing, merchandising, as well as legal resources were identified as critical resources at the firm level. Second, at the individual level, four important human agency factors, including intentionality, forethought, reactiveness and reflectiveness were revealed as essential for the success of fashion entrepreneurs. Lastly, relationships and networks were highlighted at both firm and individual levels.

This study contributes to the understanding of fashion entrepreneurship, an understudied area. The study identified critical resources for the success of fashion startups, especially during the initial business development process. The findings also emphasized the importance of human agency factors and networks at both firm and individual levels.

This paper aims to develop a finite element analysis strategy, which is suitable for the analysis of progressive failure that occurs in pressure-dependent materials in practical engineering problems.

The numerical difficulties stemming from the strain-softening behaviour of the frictional material, which is represented by a non-associated Drucker–Prager material model, is tackled using the Cosserat continuum theory, while the mixed finite element formulation based on Hu–Washizu variational principle is adopted to allow the utilization of low-order finite elements.

The effectiveness and robustness of the low-order finite element are verified, and the simulation for a real-world landslide which occurred at the upstream side of Carsington embankment in Derbyshire reconfirms the advantages of the developed elastoplastic Cosserat continuum scheme in capturing the entire progressive failure process when the strain-softening and the non-associated plastic law are involved.

The permit of using low-order finite elements is of great importance to enhance computational efficiency for analysing large-scale engineering problems. The case study reconfirms the advantages of the developed elastoplastic Cosserat continuum scheme in capturing the entire progressive failure process when the strain-softening and the non-associated plastic law are involved.

To solve several “inorganic” problems generated recently by community development in China (e.g., waste of social resources, environmental pollution, and decreased economic energy efficiency), focus should be on improving the community traffic organic micro-circulation system. As a historic and mixed functional urban community, the micro-circulation system of Xi'an Railway Bureau exhibits representativeness and complexity. Based on existing research results and years of follow-up investigations, which concentrate on circulation patterns and inherent organic development requirements of the community traffic micro-circulation system, this paper builds an evaluation index system. Value function method was used to implement the index factor quantitative analysis and comprehensive evaluation. Several related strategies were proposed to improve the organic micro-circulation system of the community, which is based on the analysis of the evaluation, in order to adopt the trend in both increasing urban development and stock updating. The analysis results demonstrate that it is necessary to present guiding renewal strategies on community land, road, people, and the environment for those mixed functional communities which use progressive renewed mode. It compensates the problems of overly strong export-oriented system, which is caused by the lack of organic traffic micro-circulation, so as to achieve the selective opening of community external. The study mainly highlights the significance of the systematic analysis of evaluation in influencing strategies on community renewal.

This article will select 25 years of subdivided data to perform Kaplan–Meier survival analysis on the export trade relations of Chinese wooden flooring, use discrete-time cloglog models to analyze influencing factors, use logit and probit models to test the robustness, and try to systematically reveal the duration of China's wood flooring export trade and its influencing factors.

This study used Kaplan–Meier survival function estimation method. In the survival analysis, survival function and hazard rate function are often used to characterize the distribution of survival time.

The continuous average export time of China's wooden flooring is relatively long, about 14 years. China's wooden flooring has a negative time dependency. After the export trade exceeds the threshold value of 15 years, the failure rate of trade greatly decreases, which has a “threshold effect.” Gravity model variables have a significant impact on the duration of China's wooden floor export.

Studying the duration of forest products trade is of great significance for clearing deep-level trade relations and promoting sustainable development of forest products trade.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel resource management strategy, which needs no special frameworks and directory servers.

The key idea is to piggyback a little extra packet header on the normal routing message by resource providers randomly. The clients can obtain the resource information gradually and need no dedicated resource queries.

The results of simulation confirm the good performance of our algorithms in different situations in terms of query latency and power consumption.

A novel resource management strategy, which needs no special frameworks and directory servers. The approach can be used in many current routing protocols. The quality of service issue is also considered for resource discovery algorithm and broadcasting method.

The paper seeks to identify key features of prenatal care utilization and quality in western regions of China and to determine the factors affecting the quality of prenatal care.

A descriptive, cross‐sectional study was conducted. The instrument for the study was a 10‐stem respondent‐administered, structured questionnaire, designed in Chinese, composed of two segments: general information on infants who were under two years old; and their mothers. The authors determined the quality (both amount and content) of prenatal care using recommendations made by UNICEF and the Chinese Ministry of Health (MOH) jointly for rural areas of China.

The median number of prenatal visits was three and rate of first trimester visits was 53.6 per cent (n=1,474). Over three quarters (75.3 per cent) of respondents had fewer than five prenatal visits, with this proportion highest in Gansu (95.8 per cent) and lowest in Shanxi (55.4 per cent) provinces. The percentage of women who received qualitatively adequate prenatal care services was only 1.8 per cent. No respondents in Gansu received a completely correct prenatal test, while this rate was 4.0 per cent in Shanxi and 0.2 per cent in Sichuan. Mothers' age (p=0.05), level of educational attainment (p=0.07) and place of prenatal care (p=0.01) were related to the quality of care.

The prenatal care utilization among women in western regions of China is not adequate. Those women who have received prenatal care seldom receive qualitatively adequate prenatal care services, according to national standards. This situation clearly requires urgent attention and improvement.