Search results

This study aims to answer the question of how incumbent firms cultivate dynamic capabilities through knowledge management so that they can efficiently adapt to the changing external environment.

This study adopts a case study approach and collects data through interviews and secondary public information on the lighting industry and two lighting firms in Lin'an, China. It qualitatively examines the challenges and strategic recommendations for incumbent firms in the context of discontinuous technological change from a knowledge management perspective.

Incumbent firms often face a variety of challenges when responding to discontinuous technological change. These challenges include identifying opportunities, overcoming path dependence and dealing with employee resistance to change. To overcome these difficulties, three strategies have been proposed to enhance the dynamic capabilities of incumbent firms through knowledge management: cross-border search helps firms improve their knowledge acquisition capabilities and better understand their environment to identify opportunities; building strategic leadership overcomes path dependence and improves knowledge integration capabilities; organizational learning deepens employees’ understanding of change and enhances organizational knowledge application capabilities.

Previous research attributes a firm's ability to cope with discontinuous technological change solely to its general resources, which weakens the importance of knowledge management in this context. This study emphasizes the importance of knowledge as a crucial strategic resource in developing the essential dynamic capabilities for incumbent firms to cope with discontinuous technological change.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of incumbent firms' coping strategies in the new context of discontinuous technological change and further promotes cross-disciplinary research.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of coping strategies in the new context of discontinuous technological change, furthermore theoretically advancing the interdisciplinary research of firm transformation and knowledge management. Meanwhile, it is crucial to identify the preconditions for cultivating dynamic capabilities, especially from a knowledge-based view, which enhances the depth of knowledge management research.

Empowering leadership is often considered unequivocally positive for employees, but recent studies have shown that this ostensibly straightforward effect is more complex. The dual facets of the effect of empowering leadership – especially on employees’ innovative behaviour – have received insufficient attention. Based on job demand-resource (JD-R) theory, this study aims to propose a theoretical framework for the relationship between empowering leadership and employees’ innovative behaviours with a dual process model of gain and loss.

This study is survey based, with 261 paired leader–employee data points collected in the People’s Republic of China.

The results show that empowering leadership has a “double-edged” effect on employees’ innovative behaviours: it affects innovative behaviours positively through employee job engagement and negatively through emotional exhaustion. Moreover, trust in leaders moderates the mediating roles of job engagement and emotional exhaustion.

This study contends that empowering leadership has a dual impact on employees and proposes a promising model of this double-edged effect to contrast with other complex models in the empowering leadership literature. Furthermore, this study uses JD-R theory to deeply explore the dual process whereby empowering leadership influences employees’ innovative behaviour and provides practical guidance for business management.

Because unethical behaviour pervades in organisations, how to inhibit the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour has become increasingly important. This study aims to integrate the deontic justice theory and affective events theory to examine the relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ vicarious learning by highlighting the mediating effect of peers’ moral anger and the moderating effect of task interdependence on this relationship.

Data were collected in two waves from 254 employees of a large manufacturing company in the People’s Republic of China.

The hypothesised moderated mediation model was supported. Specifically, as expected, peers’ moral anger mediated the negative relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and peers’ vicarious learning. Task interdependence moderated the direct relationship between the individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ moral anger and the indirect relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ vicarious learning via the peers’ moral anger such that these relationships were stronger when the level of task interdependence was higher.

This study argues that the deontic justice theory is a supplement for the social learning theory in explaining the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour. Drawing on the deontic justice theory, this study demonstrates that an individual’s unethical behaviours are unlikely to be rewarded or accepted, and by integrating the theories of deontic justice and affective events, offers a rationale for the emotional mechanism that underlies the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour.

The aim of this paper is to examine factors that motivate Chinese students' attitudes and perceptions relating to their internet entrepreneurship intentions (IEIs).

This paper is based on the results of a survey of students studying at three universities in China. It explores gender, household incomes, study disciplines, online activities as well as other factors that might influence their internet entrepreneurship intentions.

It emerges that demographic factors such as gender, household incomes and student status are positively related to their IEIs. The disciplines that a student studies, information and communication technology (ICT) courses and online shopping experiences significantly impact on their IEIs.

The results of this research study provide empirically rigorous evidence for understanding the reasons why some students in Chinese HEIs are more likely than others to become internet entrepreneurs.

Although the survey focuses on respondents studying in Chinese HEIs, the results of this research study could prove useful for entrepreneurship educators in industrially developed and developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether corporate ownership affects corporate capital structure. This study also seeks to find out whether there is difference in dynamics of the capital structure between these two groups of firms.

Based on panel data of China's listed firms from 1998 to 2007, this paper employs a static empirical model to validate the difference in capital structure between these two groups of firms, and then, a dynamic empirical model is used to explore the dynamic adjustment of the capital structure.

The empirical results show that there is structural difference in static capital structure between state-owned and private listed firms. Further study results tell us that the adjustment to an optimal capital structure is to be faster for the private firm than for the state-owned firm.

The findings suggest that compared with state-owned firms, private firms face higher financial friction in financing activities, but have more incentive to adjust toward optimal capital structure to maximize the shareholders' benefit. This study offers insights to corporate managers interested in privatization, when a state-owned firm is privatized, that firm becomes subject to the disciplining forces of the market and more active to pursue maximum market value of the firm, thus the adjustment to an optimal capital structure to be faster for private firm than for state-owned firm.

This paper for the first time looks at the influence of ownership on capital structure, from both static and dynamic perspective. And this study is helpful for regulators, and corporate managers to understand the corporate financial management behavior.

Rotary disc is a key component in the compact spherical pump, connecting shaft and piston, bearing hydraulic force conformally and constituting dynamic working chambers alternatively. Motion of rotary disc comprises two components. One is rotating around its own axis and the other is sliding on a cone surface. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the friction and wear mechanism between rotary disc and cylinder under a complicated operation condition.

Structural properties of rotary disc are analyzed first. Frictional moment of rotary disc is modeled based on its structural characteristics and working mechanism, and the constraints of the structural parameters are considered. Besides, the concept of dimensionless contact area is proposed. Comparison is performed between the proposed concept and the frictional moment to determine an optimized beginning angle for spherical pump with a given displacement. The wear model of rotary disc is also established based on its kinematic property, a velocity coefficient is proposed and its common values are presented.

Effects of structural parameters, i.e. beginning angle and ending angle on the frictional moment, are obtained quantitatively. The frictional moment increases with beginning and ending angle with different rates. While the dimensionless contact area decreases with beginning angle. The larger the piston angle, the larger the velocity coefficient will be. The rotary disc wears severely with a larger beginning angle and smaller ending angle, while it has the smallest wear rate under a smaller beginning angle and a larger ending angle.

The originality lies in modeling the complex contact force of rotary disc based on its specific structure. These conclusions can be used to optimize the structural parameters of rotary disc.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze lubrication characteristics of a bidirectional thrust bearing in a pumped storage, considering the effect of the thermal elastic deformation of the pad and collar.

This study used the fluid–solid interaction (FSI) technique to investigate the lubrication characteristics of a bidirectional thrust bearing for several typical operating conditions. The influences of the operating conditions and the thrust load on the lubrication characteristics were analyzed. Then, various pivot eccentricities were investigated to analyze the effects of the pivot position.

It is found that the effect of the radial tilt angle of the collar runner on the oil film is compensated for by the radial tilt of the pad. The central pivot support system is the main factor limiting the loads of bidirectional thrust bearings.

This paper has preliminarily revealed the lubrication mechanism of bidirectional tilting-pad thrust bearings. A three-dimensional FSI method is suggested to evaluate the thermal–elastic–hydrodynamic deformations of thrust bearings instead of the conventional method, which iteratively solves the Reynolds equation, the energy equation, the heat conduction equation and the elastic equilibrium equation.

This paper aims to investigate the lubrication regime in spherical pump, especially under different structural parameters and operational conditions.

A ball-on-plane configuration is adopted to represent the contact model between spherical piston and cylinder cover. The governing equations, which include the Reynolds and elasticity equations, are solved and validated by Jin–Dowson model. Both minimum film thickness and lambda ratio (ratio of minimum fluid film thickness to combined surface roughness of the piston and cylinder cover) of the equivalent model are obtained using an established model.

The results indicate that piston diameter and radial clearance are the two main factors affecting the pump lubrication regime. Other related parameters such as rotation speed of the piston, load, viscosity of working medium, material matching and surface roughness of piston and cylinder cover also have different impacts on the lubrication regime of the spherical pump.

These results emphasize the importance of the design and manufacturing parameters on the tribological performance of spherical pumps and these are also helpful in improving the spherical pump lubrication regime and enlarging its life cycle. This is to certify that to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the content of this manuscript is their own work. This manuscript has only been submitted to this journal and never been published elsewhere. The authors certify that the intellectual content of this manuscript is the product of their own work and that all the assistance received in preparing this manuscript and sources has been acknowledged.

This paper aims to comprehensively review the preparation methods of superhydrophobic surfaces (SHPS) for corrosion protection of Mg alloy in recent years.

The preparation methods, wettability and corrosion resistance of SHPS on Mg alloy in the past three years are systematically described in this paper.

Two types of SHPS, including single-layer and multilayer coatings for corrosion protection of Mg alloy are summarized. Preparing multilayered coatings with multifunction is the current trend in developing SHPS on Mg alloy.

This paper reviewed the preparation methods and corrosion resistance of SHPS on Mg alloys. It provides a valuable reference for researchers to develop highly durable SHPS with excellent corrosion resistance for Mg alloys.

This paper aims to evaluate diethylenetriamine (DETA) as an inhibitor on Q235 (Gr. D) steel in ammonia flue gas desulfurization (AFGD) system.

This research was carried out by weight loss, electrochemical measurements, scanning electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectrometry. The effects of DETA on crystallization of ammonium sulfate and its co-crystallization were also investigated by X-ray diffraction and infrared spectroscopy.

The inhibition efficiency of DETA reached a maximum value of 98.96 per cent. DETA is postulated to adsorb on Q235 steel surface, resulting in the formation of a protective film by the accumulation of many flat particles, and the thickness of protective film is 8 μm. DETA had no effect on the crystallization of ammonium sulfate product.

DETA can be used in AFGD system as an inhibitor to protect the equipment well.