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Digital twin (DT) is an emerging technology that enables sophisticated interaction between physical objects and their virtual replicas. Although DT has recently gained significant attraction in both industry and academia, there is no systematic understanding of DT from its development history to its different concepts and applications in disparate disciplines. The majority of DT literature focuses on the conceptual development of DT frameworks for a specific implementation area. Hence, this paper provides a state-of-the-art review of DT history, different definitions and models, and six types of key enabling technologies. The review also provides a comprehensive survey of DT applications from two perspectives: (1) applications in four product-lifecycle phases, i.e. product design, manufacturing, operation and maintenance, and recycling and (2) applications in four categorized engineering fields, including aerospace engineering, tunneling and underground engineering, wind engineering and Internet of things (IoT) applications. DT frameworks, characteristic components, key technologies and specific applications are extracted for each DT category in this paper. A comprehensive survey of the DT references reveals the following findings: (1) The majority of existing DT models only involve one-way data transfer from physical entities to virtual models and (2) There is a lack of consideration of the environmental coupling, which results in the inaccurate representation of the virtual components in existing DT models. Thus, this paper highlights the role of environmental factor in DT enabling technologies and in categorized engineering applications. In addition, the review discusses the key challenges and provides future work for constructing DTs of complex engineering systems.

This chapter outlines the philosophic underpinnings of the self-management paradigm developed over the past three decades by China’s Haier Group, a global leader in white goods. The successful transformation of Haier from a small resource-poor firm to a dominant global giant is often attributed to the self-management culture established in the company by its legendary leader Zhang Ruimin. This management paradigm is a function of the humbleness displayed by Mr. Zhang Ruimin and rooted in his strong belief in the traditional Chinese philosophy of I-Ching and Daoism. We show how the hexagram of Qian (“qian”: humbleness, modesty) from I-Ching is linked to Mr. Zhang’s humble approach and analyze how the six parts of the hexagram of Qian are related to the six development stages of the Haier Group. These insights are used to give some thoughts to the leadership challenge associated with the creation of a dynamic and responsive global organization.

This case reviews the development of Dianping. After seeing Zagat's unique business model in the United States, founder Zhang Tao found that he could bring it to China and bring about local innovation. At the beginning of its establishment, the collection and promotion of comment content was the major challenge for Dianping. At the same time, Dianping faced legal issues. To solve these problems, the review mechanism of Dianping was designed to a certain extent to ensure the fairness of the review. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, Dianping began to develop a new business model. Relying on its high-quality “word-of-mouth” content and mass basis, Dianping launched group buying, online restaurant ordering, and other businesses. Dianping has always been open to strategic partners. Since 2015, Dianping has undergone historical changes, merging with Meituan. Since then, Dianping has continuously adjusted its business and organizational structure to maintain its competitiveness. Gradually, Dianping has changed from an independent business entity into a business unit of Meituan.

In contrast to existing studies, this paper aims to propose that digital transformation does not depend on a single condition; rather, it depends on the interaction between internal and external factors of a firm. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine the effect of a combination of internal and external factors on a firm's digital transformation intention.

An empirical analysis on a sample of 112 Chinese small- and medium-sized firms was conducted by applying smart-PLS and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results of smart PLS show that external pressures (institutional and market pressures) and human capital have a positive impact on corporate digital transformation intentions. From a combination perspective, the results of the fsQCA show that there are five causal conditions that lead to high digital transformation intention. In contrast to the net effect, the results of fsQCA show that different combinations of states of internal (human capital, organizational culture and technological capital) and external elements (institutional and market pressures) of the firm are likely to stimulate digital transformation intention.

This study provides empirically based insights into firms' digital transformation intentions and advances the current understanding of the drivers and inhibitors of digital transformation. Unlike most current research, which tends to focus on the net effect of factors influencing the digital transformation of enterprises, this study focuses on identifying the core elements influencing enterprises' digital transformation intention, especially the joint effect of different factors, both internal and external to the enterprise. The combined SEM and fsQCA findings of this paper not only enrich the existing theories on digital transformation but also have high value in guiding the digital transformation of firms.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the factors influencing citizens' willingness to participate in the development of smart cities.

Citizens drawn from 30 second-tier cities in China were chosen as the research object for this empirical research. Based on citizenship behavior theory, research hypotheses were tested and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results indicated that information publicity has a direct and positive effect on residents' participation behavior. Perceived benefits, personal responsibility and subjective norms are positively associated with residents' citizenship. Additionally, citizenship was found to affect residents' participation intention positively. Finally, the moderating effect of information credibility in this context was also verified.

As one of the first empirical studies on this topic, this paper offers important guidance for future research regarding residents' participation in the development of smart cities. On this basis, the implications of this research with respect to policies that aim to encourage residents to participate in the construction of smart cities are discussed.

Flood season in our country is characterized by frequent heavy rains, and flood problems are becoming increasingly serious. The uneven distribution of water resources causes conflicts in the occurrence of floods and droughts. Implementing effective flood control planning and solving drought and flood disasters are the research highlights of relevant institutions both domestic and abroad. This study develops a multiscale method of urban flood control planning based on microcirculation. A microcirculation water ecosystem, which consists of six elements, namely, collecting, interacting, precipitating, reserving, storing, and purifying, is introduced. This study investigates precipitation; peak shaving; recycle mode of filtration at the macro level in different regions; “hierarchy” in rainwater ecosystems in rain parks, heavy rain garden parks, and wetland parks at the meso level; and the concept of zero-emission rain in residential areas and roads at the micro level. Finally, this study analyzes a rain garden and its domestic application. A conclusion is drawn that the flood control planning model based on microcirculation can effectively reduce rain runoff. Empirical measurement proves that the proposed multiscale model for city flood control planning based on microcirculation promotes flood control and effectively reduces the occurrence of droughts and floods.

Following the hierarchy-of-effects model, this study aims to propose a two-step process framework to investigate social media post efficacy via attraction and likes.

The study analyzes 113,785 social media posts from 126 WeChat official accounts to explore how external (headline features and account type) and internal (content features and media type) features impact social media post attractions and likes, respectively.

The antecedents of post attraction differ from those of post likes. First, headline features (punctuation, length, sentiment and lexical density) and account type significantly influence social media post attraction. Second, content features (depth, tone, domain specificity, lexical density and readability) and media type affect social media post likes.

First, this study considers online user engagement as a two-step process regarding social media posts and explores different influencing factors. Second, the study constructs new variables (account type and domain specificity) in each stage of the two-step process model.

Given the recent rapid economic development, the processes of industrialization and urbanization are accelerating. At the same time, the contradiction between environmental quality and economic development has become increasingly prominent and is likely to restrict the normal pace of China’s economic development and environmental protection. As such, the purpose of this paper is to incorporate the urbanization factor into an analytic framework to discuss the relationship among urbanization, economic development, and environmental pollution.

A panel data of 31 Chinese provinces from 2004 to 2015 is selected for this research. A spatial correlation test is first conducted on the environmental pollution status, then the spatial Durbin model is used to carry out spatial econometric testing of the relationship among the above three factors.

Interprovincial environmental pollution in China has significant positive spatial correlation, environmental pollution discharge in most provinces is significantly stable, discharge of environmental pollutants is transitioning from coastal to inland provinces, and urbanization and economic growth can both aggravate environmental pollution, but economic growth can relieve environmental pollution in neighboring provinces.

The relationship between economic growth, urbanization, and environmental quality has always been an important issue for sustainable development. As such, China’s urbanization leads to economic development, while rapid economic growth and environmental pollution are coordinated. This paper focuses on the specific relationship between them. To this end, local governments make concerted efforts to formulate sound environmental regulation policies based on local environmental conditions, where economic development is an effective means of alleviating the contradictory relationship between economic development and environmental protection.

The effectiveness of interorganizational governance is one of the most significant concerns of firms involved in supply chain management. Previous studies have extensively examined various interorganizational governance strategies. However, the dynamic and implementation details of interorganizational governance receive little attention, which leads to the defects of interorganizational governance literature. This study tries to explore this issue.

Based on the process and cybernetic view, this study conceptualized four interorganizational governance processes and their respective critical activities to capture the dynamic and implementation details of interorganizational governance. Furthermore, this study investigated the mapping of governance strategies into different critical activities, which unveil the various manifestations of governance strategies across these critical activities.

Four interorganizational governance processes and their respective critical activities would overarch the dynamic and implementation details of governance strategies. Furthermore, various governance strategies also would have different manifestations across the critical activities of the four processes.

This paper fills the gaps in interorganizational governance literature in which the dynamic details of governance strategies are unclear. The new conceptualization provides a new paradigm for researchers to zoom in on the subtle dynamics of interorganizational governance. The new conceptualization indicates a few promising future research directions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the diffusion of food safety information through social media affects customers’ purchase intentions in China. This leads to the identification of the critical factors that impact the purchase intention of individual consumer through the diffusion of food safety information using social media in China.

A research model is proposed based on a comprehensive review of the related studies. Such a model is then tested and validated using structural equation modeling based on the survey of 199 individuals who have experience in purchasing food products online while having social media accounts.

The study reveals that friend recommendation and perceived risk directly affect consumers’ purchase intentions and opinion leader recommendation, quality of information, credibility of information and demand for information indirectly affect consumers’ purchase intentions through the diffusion of food safety information using social media in China.

This study is the first of this kind in China for exploring the critical factors that affect consumers’ purchase intentions through the diffusion of food safety information using social media. The findings of the study are significant for the government and food enterprises to make a full use of the advantages of social media to improve the communication of food safety information in ensuring the safety of the food supply in China.